1. Tanner Lovelace Triangle Linux Users Group 11/Jan/2003
RPM Packaging 101
Tanner Lovelace
Triangle Linux Users Group
11/Jan/2003

2. Outline Package Management Basics RPM Package Management Basics
Creating Your Own RPM Packages
Creating RPM Packages of Downloaded Programs
Advanced RPM Packaging

3. Package Management Basics
Why use package management?
OpenBSD base doesn’t
Most Linux systems do
Keeps track of system packages
Files
Descriptions
Checksums
Other…
Allows easy upgrades and uninstalls

4. RPM Package Management Basics
Developed by Redhat
Dominant distribution at the time was Slackware
Slackware has packages, but not really a package management system
RPM was a big advance over Slackware
Current stable version is 4.1
Most commonly used version today is 4.0.x
We will be covering 4.0.x

5. RPM Package Concepts Pristine Sources
Most Linux software downloaded from the Internet
Any distribution specific customizations should be kept separately in patches
Makes it easier to handle new versions
Reproducible Builds
Building and packaging should be easy and reproducible
Shell script automation

6. Common RPM Installation Commands
rpm –ihv <package name>
Upgrade
rpm –Uhv <package name>
Freshen
rpm –Fhv <package names…>
Erase
rpm –e <package name>

7. Other Common RPM Commands
Query
rpm –q[option] <package name>
-qi = Query Package Information
-ql = List Package Files
-qf = Query which package a file belongs to.
--queryformat – Construct Special Query
--querytags – List available tags
-p – Specify non-installed rpm package
-a – Query all installed files

8. Other Common RPM Commands
Verify
rpm –V[option] <package name>
Compare information about installed package files with information stored in rpm database and note any discrepencies.
Compares size, MD5 sum, permissions, type, owner, and group of each package file
Signature checking
rpm {-K|--checksig} <package name>
Checks package gpg/pgp signature
Conversion to cpio
rpm2cpio cpio converts rpm files to cpio streams

9. Setting up the RPM Build Environment
NEVER BUILD RPMs AS ROOT!!!
~/.rpmmacros
%_topdir /path/to/rpm/build/env
I typically use ~/RPM
Optional temp directory
%_tmppath /path/to/tmp
Create directories
~/RPM/BUILD
~/RPM/RPMS/<arch>
~/RPM/RPMS/noarch
~/RPM/SOURCES
~/RPM/SPECS
~/RPM/SRPMS

10. Creating Your Own RPMs rpmbuild command
rpmbuild –ba – build binary and source rpms
rpmbuild –bb – build binary rpm
rpmbuild –bs – build source rpm
Before version 4, the rpm command was used instead of rpmbuild.
Compatibility aliases in 4.0
Aliases removed in 4.1 (Redhat 8.0)
Need source files, patches (if any) and a spec file.
Source and patch files go in SOURCES/
Spec file goes in SPECS/

11. RPM Spec Files Instructions for building and packaging an rpm.
Building – set of shell scripts
Packaging – General info, lists of files, etc.
Divided into sections
Headers (unlabeled section)
%description
%prep
%build
%install
%files
Others

12. Creating RPMs Examples
See Pinky and the Brain Examples at
Sub package example
Example of how to “rpm-ify” a package.
Patching
Conditional building
Sub package: libpcap
RPM-ify : naim
Patching: gaim from cvs
Conditional Building: irssi (Kevin Sonney’s rpm)

13. References
References will go here when presentation goes online..