linux rpm command

[Michael Murphy_2]

newbie question - is there an option to see if there is a certain version OR NEWER of a package? I know you can use rpm -q - but is there a way to list all versions or versions at a certain level or newer? THanks

[Ivan Ferreira]

You can use:

rpm -qa |grep

This will obtain the package version. You can identify if the version is the required from the result of that command.

[Steven E. Protter]

Shalom,

rpm packaging overwrites the previous verion of the package in most cases, leaving no trace of the previous version. Thats what up2date does, which issues an rpm -Uvh or -Fvh to install the newer package.

Ivan's command will work, if indeed the package is there.

SEP

[George Liu_4]

e.g.,

up2date -l kernel*

shows your current installed kernel-* verison and newer version available

[Siert Zijl]

Depends on your distro & repository type.

If you'are using a yum based distro like Fedora or Red Hat Enterprise Linux >= 5, you can use 'yum check-update' or 'yum list '

For Red Hat 2.1/3.0/4.0 you can use:
'up2date -l package' as George said before.

If you're running SuSE you might want to try the yast utility.

[Huc_1]

Also in the
/var/log/rpmpkgs
you will find what rpm are installed, but there is normaly also some /var/log/rpmpkgs.1
/var/log/rpmpkgs.2 /var/log/rpmpkgs.'x'

theses files are rotated by logrotate and the number of version in the /var/log and rate at which the files are created is set by the conf file. /etc/logrotate.conf

This can sometimes be usefull if to find the package that have 'recently' been updated...and the 'old' previous version.

like ex:

# diff /var/log/rpmpkgs /var/log/rpmpkgs.1
# diff /var/log/rpmpkgs /var/log/rpmpkgs.2
# diff /var/log/rpmpkgs /var/log/rpmpkgs.'x'

sometime /var/log/messages and messages.1 etc can also be usefull

enjoy life.

Jean-Pierre Huc