How do I install an RPM?
RPMs are programs that are easily installed an run. To install an RPM file, log in as root and type the following:
rpm -i rpmname-here.i386.rpm

How do I uninstall an RPM?
RPMs can be removed by typing the package name only. For instance, if we had an RPM file with the name above ( rpmname-here.i386.rpm ) we would remove it only by specifying the base name of the page, in this case rpmname:
rpm -e rpmname

How do I get a list of all installed RPMs?
As root type:
rpm -qa

How do I get a list of all files that belong to a certain package?
In this case, we'll look at all the files installed by the package elfutils. As root type:
rpm -ql elfutils

How do I get a list of all files that will be installed by an RPM file?
If we have an RPM file with the name rpmname-here.i386.rpm we would type the following:
rpm -qlf rpmname-here.i386.rpm

How do I find which package a file belongs to?
If we have an file with the name /etc/php.ini we would type the following:
rpm -qf /etc/php.ini

How do I use an SRPM?
SRPMs are the files used to create RPMs. Typically you can just get an RPM and install it asis. However, there are special cases when you'll need to create an RPM from an SRPM file. To do this, get the desired SRPM file. We'll pretend we have one called aumix-2.7-16.src.rpm.

If your install is less than Red Hat 8.0 log in as root and type the following:
rpm --rebuild aumix-2.7-16.src.rpm

If your install is Red Hat 8.0 or newer, log in as root and type the following:
rpmbuild --rebuild aumix-2.7-16.src.rpm

Towards the end of the output you will see something such as:
Wrote: /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/aumix-2.7-16.rpm

This means you have an RPM (that was just created by you!) in the /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386 directory. To install this package type:
rpm -i /usr/src/redhat/RPMS/i386/aumix-2.7-16.rpm

How do extract the files from an RPM or SRPM?
Files can be extracted from either RPM or SRPMs by using the following command (this example would extract from an RPM file called, rpm-4.2-0.69.src.rpm):
rpm2cpio rpm-4.2-0.69.src.rpm | cpio -idmv --no-absolute-filenames

After using the command above, you will get a .tar.gz file and a .spec file. The files will be located in the .tar.gz file. In this example we'd type:
tar -xvzf rpm-4.2.tar.gz

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