can not find libtinfo.so.5 needed to install an rpm in opensuse 11.1 64bit
 

I am unable to find an opensuse 11.1 rpm that contains libtinfo.so.5. I found it in a fedora rpm in rpmfind.net, but I am unable to extract the library file that I need. I tried rpm2cpio ncurses-libs-5.7-3.20090207.fc12.x86_64.rpm | cpio -ivd ./lib/libtinfo.so.5 to extract it.

Why not install the rpm?
rpm usually checks it's own database for these things(/var/lib/rpm/*). Compiles check in pkgconfig directories. But it's crazy that opensuse wants libtinfo and doesn't provide it. I'm sure you have that bit wrong.

Using the original Suse source :
wget http://download.opensuse.org/source/...-89.16.src.rpm
rpm2cpio ncurses-5.6-89.16.src.rpm | cpio -idmv
cd /home/<name>/tmp/ && tar xvf ncurses-5.6.tar.bz2 && cd ncurses-5.6/
&& ./configure \
--prefix=/home/<name>/tmp/ncurses-5.6/result --with-termlib --with-shared

.. Then you can copy libtinfo.so.5.6 ( from ncurses-5.6/result/lib/)
to /usr/lib64/ and : cd /usr/lib64/
# ln -s libtinfo.so.5.6 libtinfo.so.5

(Or send a mail to get the "Suse 11.1 - 64 '/usr/lib64/libtinfo.so.5.6' ")
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