Red Hat Knowledgebase

Just like any other file, RPMs are saved to a certain location on your file system. The location of a file in your file system is known as that file's path. The rpm command needs an accurate path to the RPM file that you wish to install. So, to work with a file you must know where it resides in your file system.

Depending how you downloaded the RPM (or any other file) it could be saved anywhere. If you use Mozilla, it can either prompt you for a location to save your download or it will save it to a pre-specified location without prompting you. If the latter is the case and you can't remember where you told Mozilla to save new downloads, you can always view the Mozilla download preferences to see where downloaded files are being stored.

If you used a command line application to download the RPM, it will likely be saved in whatever directory you ran the command. Your home directory (/home/<username>) is a good place to start looking.

Once you've located the file, say vacation-1.2.2-2.i386.rpm, it can be installed with the following command:

rpm -Uvh vacation-1.2.2-2.i386.rpm

You can also specify the full path. Let's say it was downloaded to the /tmp directory, you could execute the following:

rpm -Uvh /tmp/vacation-1.2.2-2.i386.rpm