Red Hat Knowledgebase

In order to install an RPM package you must first have the RPM you are trying to install on your system. Many people will download RPMs from a website and of course, Red Hat Network (RHN) provides all the RPM packages included in our distributions. There are two main flags that are used to install or upgrade RPM packages:

• -i is used to install a new package. Always use this for kernel installations and upgrades.
• -U is used to upgrade an RPM package but will also install a package if it does not exist in the RPM database.

Usage and additional options can be found in the RPM man page. Type man rpm from the command line. Here is some information about the -i and -U flags:

   INSTALL AND UPGRADE OPTIONS
       The general form of an rpm install command is
 
       rpm {-i|--install} [install-options] PACKAGE_FILE ...
 
       This installs a new package.
 
       The general form of an rpm upgrade command is
 
       rpm {-U|--upgrade} [install-options] PACKAGE_FILE ...
 
       This install the package or upgrades the package currently installed  to  a  newer
       version.   This  is the same as install, except all other version(s) of
       the package are removed after the new package is installed.
      

Examples:
Note: These examples assume the packages are in a directory on your system. The below RPM commands are executed in the current working directory where the new RPM files reside.

• To install an RPM package, we use of the -i flag. As mentioned before, you use this flag when you are installing a kernel RPM. In this case, you will want to leave your old kernel in place, at least temporarily, in case the new kernel does not boot. In this example, we first check to see the names of the new RPM packages with the ls command. Then we query the RPM database to see which kernel packages are already installed. You do not need to include the version number in the query, but the usage is: rpm -q <package name>. We can install the RPM package with the following command: rpm -ivh <package name>. Note the -v option will show verbose output and the -h will show the hash marks, which represents action of the progress of the RPM upgrade. Lastly, we run another RPM query to verify the package will be available.

   
  
  # ls 
  kernel-2.4.21-15.0.3.EL.i686.rpm
  kernel-smp-2.4.21-15.0.3.EL.i686.rpm
  
  # rpm -q kernel; rpm -q kernel-smp
  kernel-2.4.21-4.0.1.EL
  kernel-2.4.21-15.0.2.EL
  kernel-smp-2.4.21-4.0.1.EL
  kernel-smp-2.4.21-15.0.2.EL
  
  # rpm -ivh kernel-2.4.21-15.0.3.EL.i686.rpm
  Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
     1:kernel                 ########################################### [100%]
  # rpm -ivh kernel-smp-2.4.21-15.0.3.EL.i686.rpm
  Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
     1:kernel-smp             ########################################### [100%]
  
  # rpm -q kernel; rpm -q kernel-smp
  kernel-2.4.21-4.0.1.EL
  kernel-2.4.21-15.0.2.EL
  kernel-2.4.21-15.0.3.EL
  kernel-smp-2.4.21-4.0.1.EL
  kernel-smp-2.4.21-15.0.2.EL
  kernel-smp-2.4.21-15.0.3.EL
        

• To upgrade an RPM package, we use of the -U flag. In this example, we verify the new package name with the ls command. Then we will run an RPM query to see if the package we want to install exists in the RPM database, rpm -q <package name>. Next, we execute the RPM installation with the following command: rpm -Uvh <package name>. Note the -v option will show verbose output and the -h will show the hash marks, which represents action of the progress of the RPM upgrade. Lastly, we run another RPM query to verify the package will be available.

   
  # ls
  httpd-2.0.46-32.ent.3.i386.rpm
  mod_ssl-2.0.46-32.ent.3.i386.rpm
  
  # rpm -q httpd; rpm -q mod_ssl
  httpd-2.0.46-32.ent
  mod_ssl-2.0.46-32.ent
  
  # rpm -Uvh httpd-2.0.46-32.ent.3.i386.rpm mod_ssl-2.0.46-32.ent.3.i386.rpm
  Preparing...                ########################################### [100%]
     1:httpd                  ########################################### [ 50%]
     2:mod_ssl                ########################################### [100%]
  
  # rpm -q httpd; rpm -q mod_ssl
  httpd-2.0.46-32.ent.3
  mod_ssl-2.0.46-32.ent.3
  
        

  Note: The httpd and mod_ssl needed to be installed at the same time because of dependency issues. If you try to install one without the other, you would get an error similar to the following:

   
  # rpm -Uvh httpd-2.0.46-32.ent.3.i386.rpm
  error: Failed dependencies:
          httpd = 2.0.46-32.ent is needed by (installed) mod_ssl-2.0.46-32.ent
        

Note: Alternatively, if you have registered your machine via Red Hat Network (RHN), you may also up2date to install a new package that is available in Red Hat Network (RHN).