I need this fast!!!!
I'm checking to see if some packages are installed on a server with RedHat enterprise 4.

Problem is that all packages that i'm looking for are already installed, but I need to know if the ones installed are 32 bits or 64. Because if they are 64 I need to uninstall them and then install the 32 bits version.

rpm -qi doesn't give that info, so there must be another way.

Really need this ASAP, i don't even know if I put this on the correct forum but what the heck, desperate times...

hmmm...

rpm -qa | grep i386
rpm -qa | grep x86_64

.... surely?

Both commands returned nothing

Dear Mr krysak

If both commands return nothing, it means those packages are not installed in your system.

rgds
bil

Registered linux user # 467324
_________________________________________________________________
ALL HUMAN ACTIONS ARE EQUIVALENT...............................
AND ALL ARE ON PRINCIPLE DOOMED 2 FAILURE
_________________________________________________________________

You should be able to do:

$ rpm -q <package name>

to get the version of the package that is installed returned to you.

Example:

$ rpm -q mysql

returns:

$ mysql-5.0.27-1.fc6

Although, if the above listed two queries returned no results, the chances of this being any more helpful are slim, because that means that the package names didn't include "i386" or "x86_64" in their file names.

the comands returned nothing because they were misused, the correct would have been:

rpm -qa | grep <package name>

the problem is that redhat doesn't store the "end" of the package for instance:
gcc-3.4.4-2.i386.rpm

it only stores the name of the package not if it was for 64 or 32.

But anyways forget about it, the problem was resolved some other way here, but I'm still curious, isn't there a way to know?

The commands were used correctly thank you very much - and they correctly returned that the strings "i386" and "x86_64" are not part of any package names. As you pointed out.

I had a suspicion that might be the case - but there were other possibilities.

<reads other replies> Seems they are also misunderstood a lot.

Probably the quickest approach would be to use up2date to install/update each package on your list - but the x86_64 version. If it is already installed it will update. If it is already the latest version it will say so.

There is a question about how the problem would arise... I take it RHEL is 64 bit, but is running a mixed-package environment?