Loading ...How to extract an RPM package without installing it
Most of you may know to how extract a tarballs and/or a zip files. Someone recently PM me with a question:
How do I extract an RPM package without installing it on my Fedora Core Linux v5?
To be frank there is no direct RPM option available via rpm command to extract an RPM file. But there is a small nifty utility available called rpm2cpio. It Extract cpio archive from RPM Package Manager (RPM) package. With the following hack you will be able to extract an RPM file.
So rpm2cpio converts the .rpm file specified as a single argument to a cpio archive on standard out. If a - argument is given, an rpm stream is read from standard in.
Syntax is as follows:
rpm2cpio myrpmfile.rpm
rpm2cpio - < myrpmfile.rpm
rpm2cpio myrpmfile.rpm | cpio -idmv
Example
Download an RPM file:
$ mkdir testExtract RPM file using rpm2cpio and cpio command:
$ cd test
$ wget http://www.cyberciti.biz/files/lighttpd/rhel4-php5-fastcgi/php-5.1.4-1.esp1.x86_64.rpm
$ rpm2cpio php-5.1.4-1.esp1.x86_64.rpm | cpio -idmvOutput:
/etc/httpd/conf.d/php.conf ./etc/php.d ./etc/php.ini ./usr/bin/php ./usr/bin/php-cgi ./usr/lib64/httpd/modules/libphp5.so ./usr/lib64/php ./usr/lib64/php/modules .... ..... .. ./var/lib/php/session ./var/www/icons/php.gif 19188 blocks
Output of rpm2cpio piped to cpio command (see how to use cpio) with following options:
- i: Restore archive
- d: Create leading directories where needed
- m: Retain previous file modification times when creating files
- v: Verbose i.e. display progress
Verify that you have extracted an RPM file in current directory:
$ ls Output:
etc php-5.1.4-1.esp1.x86_64.rpm usr var
This is useful if you want to extract configuration file or other file w/o installing an RPM file.
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Tags: cpio_archive, extract_file, fedora_core, idmv, Linux, nifty_utility, rpm, rpm2cpio, wget
[...] How to extract an RPM package without installing it | nixCraft (tags: linux rpm extraction) [...]
You can also use alien package to convert rpm to tgz…
Thanks for pointing out alien package to convert rpm to tgz.
thanks…worked first time
I love it when I search Google and find a good answer right away.
Thank you so much.
thanks a lot
I just found this page and it is great. One thing to note is that opensuse compresses the cpio part with lzma to decrease size so you have to do something like the following instead.
rpm2cpio file.rpm | lzma -d | cpio -idmv
This will extract the files for you.