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Unit 4: Installing Software

2. For the ............................................, RPM makes system updates easy. Notes
3. The ............................................ includes helper scripts, file attributes, and descriptive
information about the package.
Figure 4.1: RPM

4.2 Benefits of RPM

The benefits of RPM are discussed below:
Upgradability: Using RPM, you can upgrade individual components of your system without
completely reinstalling. When you get a new release of an operating system based on RPM (such
as Red Hat Linux), you don’t need to reinstall on your machine (as you do with operating systems
based on other packaging systems). RPM allows intelligent, fully-automated, in-place upgrades
of your system. Configuration files in packages are preserved across upgrades, so you won’t lose
your customizations. There are no special upgrade files need to upgrade a package because the
same RPM file is used to install and upgrade the package on your system.
Powerful Querying: RPM is designed to provide powerful querying options. You can do searches
through your entire database for packages or just for certain files. You can also easily find out
what package a file belongs to and from where the package came. The files an RPM package
contains are in a compressed archive, with a custom binary header containing useful information
about the package and its contents, allowing you to query individual packages quickly and easily.
System Verification: Another powerful feature is the ability to verify packages. If you are
worried that you deleted an important file for some package, simply verify the package. You
will be notified of any anomalies. At that point, you can reinstall the package if necessary. Any
configuration files that you modified are preserved during reinstallation.

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