Rpm-The Package Manager - Novell LINUX ENTERPRISE SERVER 11 - ADMINISTRATION Administration Manual

search works on package names or, optionally, on package summaries and descrip-
tions, and displays status (S) information in the first column of the list of found packages.
info with a package name as an argument displays detailed information about a
package.
The what-provides package is similar to rpm -q --whatprovides
package, but rpm is only able to query the RPM database (that is the database of all
installed packages). Zypper, on the other hand, will tell you about providers of the ca-
pability from any repository, not only those that are installed.
For more query commands and detailed usage information, see the Zypper manpage
(man zypper).
4.1.6 For More Information
For more information about managing software from the command line, enter zypper
help or zypper help command or see the zypper(8) manpage.
4.2 RPM—the Package Manager
RPM (RPM Package Manager) is used for managing software packages. Its main
commands are rpm and rpmbuild. The powerful RPM database can be queried by
the users, system administrators and package builders for detailed information about
the installed software.
Essentially, rpm has five modes: installing, uninstalling (or updating) software packages,
rebuilding the RPM database, querying RPM bases or individual RPM archives, integrity
checking of packages and signing packages. rpmbuild can be used to build installable
packages from pristine sources.
Installable RPM archives are packed in a special binary format. These archives consist
of the program files to install and certain meta information used during the installation
by rpm to configure the software package or stored in the RPM database for documen-
tation purposes. RPM archives normally have the extension .rpm.
26 Administration Guide