help, rpm tool needed

[igarn]

can anybody reoommend me a rpm tool, that can do (some of) the following things:

- show me what packages are installed
( also when the packages was installed, do some search and order by different criteria )

- let me view package files in a directory/list of directories, do some search, sort, etc.

- automatically install all the needed packages for a requested package, finding them in a directory list.

I just installed Feodora Core 4 and I definitely dislike their packaging softawre, because it can only handle the packages it knows about. And although I have the iso images mounted, when I doubleclick a rpm file, the system asks me to insert a CD

Where can I read more about RPM ?

thanks in advance.

[bryansmith]

I have never really delt directly with RPM's (always used package managers) but for reading, try here.

Bryan

[Dolda2000]

- show me what packages are installed
( also when the packages was installed, do some search and order by different criteria )

I'm not sure exactly what you mean, but if you're referring to listing all the packages that are installed on the system, run `rpm -qa'. To search or order or anything, use standard shell filters, like `grep' and `sort', such as this example:

rpm -qa | grep -i gtk | sort

That will list all packages whose names contain "gtk" (case insensitively) and sort them alphabetically.

- let me view package files in a directory/list of directories, do some search, sort, etc.

I'm not sure what you mean by this. If you want to know what package a certain file belongs to, run `rpm -qf /path/to/the/file'. If you want to list all files that belong to a certain package, run `rpm -ql packagename'. Again, to search, sort, etc., just use standard shell filters.

- automatically install all the needed packages for a requested package, finding them in a directory list.

That would be yum. For example, if you run `yum install squirrelmail', it will install squirrelmail and, if they aren't already installed, apache and php. yum looks through certain repositories to resolve dependencies. By default, the Fedora Core and Fedora Extras repositories are configured. There are some other repositories on the net, which you can add to yum's configuration.

I just installed Feodora Core 4 and I definitely dislike their packaging softawre, because it can only handle the packages it knows about.

I'm not sure what that's supposed to mean. What kind of packages does it "know about", and what kind of packages can it not handle?

And although I have the iso images mounted, when I doubleclick a rpm file, the system asks me to insert a CD :!: :?: :!:

I'll admit that that's really weird -- that's not how it usually does. Did you try running "rpm -ihv" on the RPM file?

Where can I read more about RPM ?

Hmm... I dunno really, but I guess http://www.rpm.org/ would be a good a place as any.