Advanced RPM topics

Query
“queryformat”  option can query every piece information of a rpm package, the  information tags (macros ) are returned  by “rpm –querytags” command

#list top 2 rpm packages sorted by installation time
$rpm -qa  | xargs -I{} rpm -q --queryformat "{}        %{installtime}\n" {} | sort -rn -k2 | head -2
collectl-3.5.1-1        1317864013
git-1.7.4.1-1.el5        1316484590
#unfortunately the time returned is unixtime.  You can convert it to human readable format by  “date –d @timestring” e.g 
$date -d @1317864013
Thu Oct  6 12:20:13 EST 2011
#but there is a shortcut  “--last”
$ rpm -qa --last  | head -2
collectl-3.5.1-1                              Thu 06 Oct 2011 12:20:13 PM EST
git-1.7.4.1-1.el5                             Tue 20 Sep 2011 12:09:50 PM EST

"rpm -qa" supports regular expression itself, rather than pipe to grep e.g “rpm -qa | grep perl”
“rpm –qa perl\*” also works. There is no improvement on speed but typing become lesser.
requires and provides
#You can check the package dependency before install the package

$ rpm -qp --requires git-1.7.6-1.el5.rf.i386.rpm
..
libssl.so.6 
…
#To meet the dependency, you want to check who provides libssl.so.6 
$yum whatprovides libssl.so.6
openssl-0.9.8e-20.el5.i686 : The OpenSSL toolkit
Repo        : base
Matched from:
Other       : libssl.so.6
#if openssl has been installed, “rpm -q –whatprovides” can also provide the answer
$rpm -q --whatprovides libssl.so.6
openssl-0.9.8e-12.el5_4.6

rpm scriptlets

#query all nopre|nopost|nopreun|nopostun  scripts
$rpm -q --scripts xinetd
postinstall scriptlet (using /bin/sh):
if [ $1 = 1 ]; then
/sbin/chkconfig --add xinetd
fi
preuninstall scriptlet (using /bin/sh):
if [ $1 = 0 ]; then
/sbin/service xinetd stop > /dev/null 2>&1
/sbin/chkconfig --del xinetd
fi
postuninstall scriptlet (using /bin/sh):
if [ $1 -ge 1 ]; then
/sbin/service xinetd condrestart >/dev/null 2>&1
Fi
#query postinstall script only
$ rpm -q --queryformat "%{POSTIN}"  xinetd
if [ $1 = 1 ]; then
/sbin/chkconfig --add xinetd
#Don’t run the scripts during install/remove
rpm –i –noscripts|nopre|nopost|nopreun|nopostun   pkgname
rpm –e –noscripts|nopre|nopost|nopreun|nopostun   pkgname

Extract rpm contents without install

#use rpm2cpio to extract everything
$mkdir /tmp/epel
$ cd /tmp/epel
$ rpm2cpio /root/epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm | cpio -ivd
./etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-EPEL
..
#use rpm2cpio to extract particular file
$rpm2cpio /root/epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm | cpio -ivd  ./usr/share/doc/epel-release-5
#another way is to use rpm install with alternative root
$ rpm --root /tmp/epel/ -ivh  --nodeps /root/epel-release-5-4.noarch.rpm

Recover corrupted rpm database
Build RPM from source file