20.1. RPM: Redhat Package Management System

Use the rpm -V option to check whether or not a package has been modified.

For example:

rpm -V textutils

If none of the files from the textutils package have changed then rpm will exit without outputting any data. If, on the other hand, the program has changed, you may see something like this:

U.5....T /bin/cat

This isn't as cryptic as it appears. The line returned from rpm -V contains any number of eight characters plus the full path to the file. Here are the characters and their meaning:[1]

• S --- File size differs

• M --- Mode differs (includes permissions and file type)

• 5 --- MD5 sum differs

• D --- Device major/minor number mis-match

• L --- ReadLink(2) path mis-match

• U --- User ownership differs

• G --- Group ownership differs

• T --- mTime differs

Mandriva Users Note

Mandriva Linux uses a customised version of RPM called urpmi (It consists of the urpm* commands, urpmi to install, urpme to remove and urpmf and urpmq to query). This customised version has advantages over standard RPM, including automatic-dependency solving and Debian apt-get style functions (ability to download programs over the internet and have all dependencies resolved automatically). The urpm* commands are all described in detail in Mandriva's documentation and various sources online.