Page 76 - DCAP106_OPERATING_SYSTEM_TOOLS

Avinash Bhagat, Lovely Professional University Unit 4: Installing Software

Unit 4: Installing Software Notes

CONTENTS
Objectives

Introduction
4.1 The Red Hat Package Manager (RPM)
4.2 Benefits of RPM
4.2 The RPM Command Line Tools
4.3.1 Installing a New Package
4.3.2 Querying a Package
4.3.3 Uninstalling a Package
4.3.4 GnoRPM
4.3.5 Compiling Software
4.3.6 Getting and Unpacking the Package
4.3.7 Looking for Documentation
4.3.8 Configuring the Package
4.3.9 Compiling Your Package

4.3.10 Installing the Package
4.4 Summary
4.5 Keywords
4.6 Review Questions
4.7 Further Readings

Objectives

After studying this unit, you will be able to:

z z Explain the concept of RPM
z z Discuss benefits of RPM
z z Describe RPM command line tool

Introduction

Several package managers are available for Linux to track and manipulate the applications
installed on the system. The most widely used of these Linux package managers is the RPM
Package Manager (formerly the Red Hat Package Manager), or RPM for short.
Although RPM was initially developed for Red Hat Linux, a combination of technical features
and good timing has resulted in RPM’s becoming the de facto standard for packaging software
on most Linux distributions. The fact that Red Hat released the source code to the RPM software
under an open-source license also helped its adoption.
The RPM Package Manager (RPM) is capable of installing, uninstalling, verifying, querying, and
updating computer software packages. Each software package consists of an archive of files along
with information about the package like its version, a description, and the like. There is also a

LOVELY PROFESSIONAL UNIVERSITY 69