Actually, both of you are right in your own ways. The
rpm is a gzipped cpio file with a few headers ... and
therefore, plain and simple cpio cannot work. Alien
is a perl script and is dependent upon external progs
to do the actual work (where required).
An RPM package file is divided in 4 logical sections:
. Lead -- 96 bytes of "magic" and other info
. Signature -- collection of "digital signatures"
. Header -- holding area for all the package info
. Archive -- compressed archive of all the files in
the package
The Archive is currently a gzipped cpio archive. The
cpio archive type used is SVR4 with a CRC checksum.
For further details see /usr/doc/rpm/format.gz (in case you
have rpm.deb installed).
USM Bish
On Mon, Sep 11, 2000 at 02:46:00PM -0800, Ethan Benson wrote:
> On Tue, Sep 12, 2000 at 02:42:50AM +0800, [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> > "unlike rpm which you need to compile rpm to access a .rpm."
> >
> > I think not. I managed to open an .rpm using the Gnome file manager in a
> > debian-based installation. An .rpm appears to be a cpio archive. Correct me,
> > folks, if this is misinformation.
>
> i just tried to extract an rpm with cpio, it failed miserably. rpm
> may be BASED on cpio file format but that is not what it is anymore.
>
> as for gnome i would not be surprised if it used /usr/bin/rpm to do
> the extraction. in fact:
>
> dlocate -s gmc:
> [...]
> Suggests: gpm, rpm, gedit, eeyes
> [...]
>
> hmm wonder why it would suggest rpm? perhaps becuase it uses rpm to
> access .rpm files?
>
> > Besides, you can always "alien"-ate an .rpm
>
> dlocate -s alien:
> [...]
> Depends: debhelper (>= 0.88), perl5 | perl (>= 5.004), rpm (>= 2.4.4-2),
> dpkg-dev, make, cpio
> [...]
>
> there it is again, seems alien just runs /usr/bin/rpm to access the
> .rpm file. in fact i recall Joey saying this is how it works in the
> past.
>
> from the alien man page:
>
> For converting from and to .rpm format the Red Hat Package
> ^^^^^^^^^^^
> Manager must be installed (See rpm (8) ).
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
>
> i stand by my statement, it is NOT misinformation.
>
> --
> Ethan Benson
> http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/
