Dave Whitinger, dave@whitinger.net v1.3, 13 April 1998 This document describes how to get RPM installed and working properly under Slackware. The information contained herein, however, is probably applicable to any Linux distribution. RPM is the "Red Hat Package Manager" and is the heart of the Red Hat Linux distribution. It's most basic functionality is to install and de-install packages. This document is geared toward installing RPM on a slackware system using an Intel processor, but the information contained herein should be applicable to any distribution. The latest version of this HOWTO is always available at � For further reading, consult the RPM-HOWTO (available at your neighborhood LDP mirror). Also, consider buying a copy of the excellent book, Maximum RPM, by Ed Bailey of Red Hat Software, Inc. The newest release of RPM is always available from: ftp.rpm.org/pub/rpm/dist/latest As of this writing, the latest version was rpm-2.4.12-1.i386.tar.gz Notice the .i386 section. This means that it is a binary package for the Intel architecture, ready to untar and run. Make sure that the file you download has the i386 in the filename, otherwise the following instructions will not work. The easiest way to install RPM is to use Slackware's native package manager. You must be root to install RPM. installpkg /home/dave/rpm-2.4.12-1.i386.tar.gz Of course, replace the /home/dave with the correct path for the filename. (NOTE!) If that fails, simply untar the file with these commands: cd / ; tar zxvpf /home/dave/rpm-2.4.12-1.i386.tar.gz Next, you have to create a directory called "rpm" under the /var/lib tree. mkdir /var/lib/rpm Now type 'rpm --initdb' to initialize the rpm database. If everything has gone correctly up to this point, you will have a rpm-capable system! Test it out by grabbing any rpm file and installing it with 'rpm -Uvh filename.rpm' Be aware that on several versions of RPM, the tar file has been created using incorrect permissions. As soon as you install RPM, check your permissions of various directories (/bin, /usr, etc). If the permissions are of 700 (drwx------), then you have been infected by the bug. To fix these permissions problems, run this shell script: #!/bin/sh chmod 755 /bin chmod 755 /usr chmod 755 /usr/bin chmod 755 /usr/doc chmod 755 /usr/lib chmod 755 /usr/man chmod 755 /usr/man/man8 chmod 755 /usr/share chmod 755 /usr/share/locale chmod 755 /usr/share/locale/de chmod 755 /usr/share/locale/de/LC_MESSAGES chmod 755 /usr/share/locale/pt-br chmod 755 /usr/share/locale/pt-br/LC_MESSAGES chmod 755 /usr/share/locale/sv chmod 755 /usr/share/locale/sv/LC_MESSAGES chmod 755 /usr/src Feel free to E-Mail me if you have any questions about this. I recognize Red Hat Software, Inc. and Patrick Volkerding for their fine Linux distributions. Thanks to Milan Kopacka (mkop5230@ss1000.ms.mff.cuni.cz) for bringing to my attention a better way to install RPM (installpkg). This HOWTO is copyright 1998 by Dave Whitinger, and is a free document. You can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the License, or any later version.