Package management in the Red Hat distribution is handled through an interface called RPM (Red Hat Package Management). Two popular RPM search engines in the Red Hat community are http://www.rpmfind.net and http://www.rpmseek.com.
To get all of the information for a package (newpackage-1-50.rpm), execute
# rpm -qip newpackage-1-50.rpm
Name : newpackage Distribution: (none) Version : 1 Vendor: (none) Release : 50 Build Date: Mon May 24 19:59:25 1999 Install date: (not installed) Build Host: satan.ucdavis.edu Group : new packages Source RPM: newpackage-1-50.src.rpm Size : 3080130 License: GNU Summary : does neat stuff Description : This package does some really great stuff that you have GOT to have!
To check to see if a package is installed,
# rpm -q newpackage
Package newpackage is not installed.
To find out what files this package will install (good practice),
# rpm -qpl newpackage-1-50.rpm
To install,
# rpm -ihv newpackage-1-50.rpm
If there are failed dependencies, the relevant RPM files must be downloaded and installed before the package will install successfully.
To remove a package,
# rpm -e newpackage
To upgrade,
# rpm -U newpackage-1-51.rpm
To rebuild the RPM database,
# rpm -rebuild
To return a list of all installed packages in the RPM database,
# rpm -qa
