RPM installations
 

Whenever i install some software using rpm on RH-9. It claims it installs fine, but i can never find it. It's not in the menu so where is it..?

p.s.

i normally use:
rpm -ivh <packagename>
rpm -Uvh <if its and upgrade>

or right click with installer

So whats going on...?

Depends on the package but most install at /usr/local/bin or /usr/bin.

I am also a Linux newbie (less then 3 years), but when I want to know where a program is, I usually type in: whereis packagename That usually gives me a few directories where the package has files installed. Also, you can use the command: apropos whateveryou'relookingfor to help you find commands that you might not know about. Now I might be a bit off base here or there may be commands better then the one's I've given you, so please take my advice with a grain of salt. Hope that helps!

Travis Beehler

Use the locate command, but don't forget to run updatedb before.

If your problem is that there's no icon in the menu bar, it depends on the RPM. It is usually depending on your distribution (if you're installing rpm from other distribs).

There is another, slightly less friendly option, and that is to use find. Similar to locate, but not as juicy.... Just type in find -name "*guessed-package_name*" or similar wildcard search strings and sit back and wait! I there are a bunch of potential files that you may want to review later you can get find to put the file list into a text document that you can view/edit etc later by issuing the command find -name "*" < file_list.txt This also makes it easy to delete files from a filelist or to move/copy etc them to a different location. A cool way to get the package names is to use rpm -qa | grep <package-name>....Hope this helps?

Perhaps, you may explicitly add the option "--root=/" and/or "-vv", then try again. To find the files' location, try "rpm -ql pkgname".

Ouah, lots of people have already answered you, and they are all correct. Let me give you a general overview.

rpm files contains many informations about how to install themselves, who made them, which version they are, ... Using the option -i or -U you install the default installation :

rpm -i something.4.02-xxx.rpm

But before installing them, you can ask questions about the pakage, using the -q (querry) option. There are all kind of questions you can ask, the one you needed is the location where they install :

rpm -qpl something.4.02-xxx.rpm

and you'll get a list all the files installed and their place. You should google "rpm tutorial" and you'll find many very well written tutorials about rpm files.

The list of all the rpm files installed and uninstalled is maintained in a data base somewhere. It's good to update this base by typing
updatedb

If your database is up to date, you can just ask where a given file (from an rpm package) is located by the command "locate" :

locate something

and you'll get the list of all places where files related to "something" have been installed.

These command is specific to files installed from an rpm package. But rpm's are just one way of managing softwares. If you want to find the location of a file, whether it's from RPM or not, use the standard UNIX (Linux) "find" command :

find / -name something* -print

Look at the man page for "find" for details. This is one the very powerfull command you can use, and nothing will escape it. In the commande line above, I was just asking "look for all files beginings with something in their name ; begin your search from the root / directory ; display the results".

hope you have enough !

Re: RPM installations
 

You can find the files with

rpm -ql <packagename-without-version-number-and-suffix>

i.e.

rpm -Uvh abiword-1.0.4-2.i386.rpm

and then

rpm -ql abiword

----

thanks for all your replies!

when i type for example: whereis mplayer

i get:

mplayer: (whats this mean with a colon at the end?)

Accually you may try 'locate mplayer' instead, this always seems to work better for me. You will need to do a updatedb first though.

when you get mplayer: it's just giving you a list of where it found it at. For example, I do a "whereis proftpd" on my home system (without the quotes) and it gives me "proftpd: /usr/sbin/proftpd /etc/proftpd.conf /usr/share/man/man8/proftpd.8.gz" without the quotes. However, when I do a "whereis mplayer" which is not installed, I get "mplayer:" Hope that helps you out. On a side note, you may want to look into webmin http://www.webmin.com It will allow you to do most of your day to day administrative stuff via a web browser. For some people this is an easier way to do things. God knows I've had a bunch of time saved by this little gem. Just my 2 cents.

Travis Beehler

Re: RPM installations
 

Most programs can be physically found in the directories /usr/bin (the normal place), /usr/local/bin (usually personal stuff), sometimes /usr/bin/X11.

The big issue, though, is repopulating the menu or adding a new entry. Some distributions will do this automatically for you, others don't.

What desktop manager are you using? KDE? GNOME? Something else?

Well I'm personally using KDE 3.something and have just installed aMSN from tarball.
I'd like to add it to KDE menu under the voice 'Communication'
How can I do that?

Here's the correct answer:

# rpm -q <packagename>

So for example; if I just installed Perl, with:

# rpm -Uvvh perl-5.8.0-88.4.i386.rpm

To see if it really is installed (packagename = packagename - version number) :

# rpm -q perl
perl-5.8.0-88.4
$

or if you wanted to list all of the Perl packages that are installed:

$ rpm -qa | grep perl

To list information about the package you just installed:

$ rpm -qi perl

To list information about the package before it is installed (add the -p option) :

$ rpm -qpi perl-5.8.0-88.4.i386.rpm

If you want to see the list of files that will be installed (add the -l option) :

$ rpm -qpil perl-5.8.0-88.4.i386.rpm

or, if you want to see a list of the files that were just installed (remove the -p) :

$ rpm -qil perl


TIP: If you are going to use the -i option to install packages, it is wise to check
to see if the package is already installed. Otherwise you may end up with more
then one version of the same package. Note that in the example above I used
the "-U" (upgrade) option to install the Perl package, this is a much safer bet. It
first checks to see if the package is already installed, if it isn't, it installs it. If it is
installed, then it upgrades the package. I only use the "-i" to install a package
when I want multiple versions of that particular package, like in the case of kernels...


/Les

I have a problem wiith file dependancies. It tells me for example it needs python.2.2 but I got python2.3 and it won't find it so I can't install. How can I show the rpm that python2.3 is there?