I download and install packages on my Red Hat Enterprise Linux Server 6 machine using YUM package manager in command-line mode.
When I install apk files on my Android phone, they go to /data/app directory, I am wondering where RHEL6 keeps its installed rpm files?
Yum maintains a cache of the RPMs it downloads here:
/var/cache/yum/<you architecture>/<OS version>/
For example my box is Fedora 14, x86_64 architecture so I have the following:
$ ls /var/cache/yum/x86_64/14/
adobe-linux-i386 lamolabs rpmfusion-nonfree
adobe-linux-x86_64 lamolabs-noarch rpmfusion-nonfree-debuginfo
Dropbox nautilus-flickr-uploader rpmfusion-nonfree-rawhide-debuginfo
fedora qm rpmfusion-nonfree-source
...
...
But the RPMs that get installed are basically like a zip or tar file. So the contents of these files get dumped into the system and RPM maintains a database of what packages it has installed. The RPM "database" is located in this directory:
$ ls /var/lib/rpm
Basenames __db.002 Dirnames Installtid Packages Pubkeys Sha1header
Conflictname __db.003 Filedigests Name Providename Requirename Sigmd5
__db.001 __db.004 Group Obsoletename Provideversion Requireversion Triggername
You can see where files get installed per each RPM with these commands.
$ rpm -ql rpm
/bin/rpm
/etc/rpm
/usr/bin/rpm2cpio
/usr/bin/rpmdb
/usr/bin/rpmquery
/usr/bin/rpmsign
/usr/bin/rpmverify
/usr/lib/rpm
/usr/lib/rpm/macros
/usr/lib/rpm/platform
/usr/lib/rpm/platform/amd64-linux
...
...
$ rpm -qi rpm
Name : rpm Relocations: (not relocatable)
Version : 4.8.1 Vendor: Fedora Project
Release : 7.fc14 Build Date: Tue 04 Oct 2011 03:49:08 AM EDT
Install Date: Tue 25 Oct 2011 09:36:34 AM EDT Build Host: x86-05.phx2.fedoraproject.org
Group : System Environment/Base Source RPM: rpm-4.8.1-7.fc14.src.rpm
Size : 2035701 License: GPLv2+
Signature : RSA/SHA256, Tue 04 Oct 2011 12:14:48 PM EDT, Key ID 421caddb97a1071f
Packager : Fedora Project
URL : http://www.rpm.org/
Summary : The RPM package management system
Description :
The RPM Package Manager (RPM) is a powerful command line driven
package management system capable of installing, uninstalling,
verifying, querying, and updating software packages. Each software
package consists of an archive of files along with information about
the package like its version, a description, etc.
-ql java-11-openjdk-src ;)
– Line
Aug 29 '19 at 12:09
The rpm files themselves are downloaded and then installed. Once these files are installed, they are tracked by the rpm database. To see where the files for a particular rpm were installed, you can run rpm -ql.
E.g.
[z@localhost ~]# rpm -ql bash |head
/bin/bash
/bin/sh
/etc/skel/.bash_logout
/etc/skel/.bash_profile
/etc/skel/.bashrc
/usr/bin/bashbug-64
/usr/share/doc/bash-4.1.2/COPYING
/usr/share/info/bash.info.gz
/usr/share/locale/af/LC_MESSAGES/bash.mo
/usr/share/locale/bg/LC_MESSAGES/bash.mo
Shows the first ten files installed by the bash rpm. That being said, rpms also contain pre and post scripts and some poorly built packages might drop files that wouldn't get tracked in the rpm database.
If that wasn't what you were asking, yum can cache rpms when downloading for an install. Try looking around in /var/cache/yum/ - but this only applies if you have keepcache=1 set in your /etc/yum.conf.
