Good morning everyone... here is my question.

!!! caveat!!! I am restricted from using yum or any online repository

1. I listed @core in my kickstart
2. in the *comps.xml file:
<id>core</id>
... stuff ...
<packagereq type="mandatory">basesystem</packagereq>

How do I trace the .rpms contained in the /Packages directory of the cdrom to the packagereq name of basesystem? I feel like there should be another .xml type file somewhere with that info... or an rpm [options] basesystem but I can't figure it out.

Thanks in advance.

Additional info to prevent TLDR: The reason I'm asking is that I installed the @additional-devel group and it installed giflib-4.1.6-9 which was unexpected by me so it must be a dependency of one of the mandatory required packages but I don't know how to dig deeper than described above.

rpm -q --whatrequires giflib

The rpm database contains the dependency tree.

that WILL make life very difficult for you

yum was created to solve the dependency HELL with using just "rpm"

a 5 minuet job with yum could take 3 hours doing it by hand

if this is a install disk
look up what is on this unknown rhel/cent/sl os

have a read through the rpm manual