[SWLUG] confused by rpm

[justin at discordia.org.uk]

On 18 May, Dick Bain wrote:
> Have a friend who uses yahoo messenger, so I installed ymessenger for 
> Mandrake but when it starts it gives a load of gtk error messages before 
> starting so I thought I would remove it and start again, however if I type:
> [root at debains dick]# rpm -el ymessenger-0.99.19-1mdk.i586.rpm
> I get the message:
> error: package ymessenger-0.99.19-1mdk.i586.rpm is not installed
> and when I type:
> [root at debains dick]# rpm -i ymessenger-0.99.19-1mdk.i586.rpm
> I get:
> package ymessenger-0.99.19-1mdk is already installed

RPM only accepts the full file name for operations that actually
use a file, ie -U -i or -p  operations.

For everything else it uses the name of the package, without the version
number.

So for querying what an installed package is: rpm -qi ymessenger
For listing all the files in that package: rpm -ql ymessenger
etc.

You can also include the version number, to differentiate if you have
somehow installed two versions of the same program, but its generally
not required.

To get a full list of all the packages installed, along with their
version numbers, see 'rpm -qa'