Red Hat RPM Guide [Paperback]

Eric Foster-Johnson (Author)

Book Description

ISBN-10: 0764549650 | ISBN-13: 978-0764549656 | Publication Date: March 1, 2003 | Edition: 1

• RPM is the Linux industry standard for making application installation easy and its use is gaining mindshare amongst users and administrators of other Unix platforms
• Offers insight and examples to creating applications that rely upon or enhance RPM, enabling users to package and deploy software in RPM format
• Discusses the use of RPM to manage software and examines the tools provided for user control
• Book will be technically reviewed by the key RPM programmer at Red Hat

RED HAT PRESS(TM)
Linux Solutions from the Experts at Red Hat
Red Hat-the world's leading Linux company-presents a series of unrivaled guides that are reviewed and approved by the experts at Red Hat. Each book is packed with invaluable tips and techniques that are ideal for everyone from beginning to advanced network and systems professionals, as well as home and small businesses.

Editorial Reviews

From the Back Cover

Your Official Red Hat Linux Guide to RPM

Reviewed and approved by the experts at Red Hat, this in-depth guide offers a complete education on Red Hat Package Manager, or RPM. Veteran software developer Eric Foster-Johnson supplies everything you need to know to create applications that rely on RPM, or to package and deploy software in RPM format.

First, you will learn how the package management approach, along with specific RPM tools, enables more efficient user control. Then you’ll move step by step through preparing software for release in an easy-to-manage RPM format, explore programming interfaces and supplemental software that can enhance RPM operation, and acquire the knowledge you need to extend RPM functionality.

With its detailed coverage, comprehensive appendices, and handy at-a-glance references, this book is a resource you’ll consult many times over.

Proven Red Hat RPM Solutions

• Understand the package concept, the history of RPM, its design, and its terminology
• Query the RPM database and verify installed packages and files
• Install, remove, and upgrade software using RPM
• Back up an RPM database and repair a damaged one
• Examine package dependencies and transactions and understand how to use them
• Learn to build and package RPMs, optimize builds, sign built packages, and avoid common packaging mistakes
• Discover how to automate RPM with scripts and learn when scripting is appropriate
• Program RPM with C, Python, and Perl
• Extend RPM on non-Red Hat Linuxes, create non-Linux RPMs, and customize RPM behavior

"Finally, the missing guide to RPM. For system administrators and developers, this is the book from which to learn how best to exploit RPM’s features."
–Chip Turner,
Senior Software Engineer, Red Hat

About the Author

Eric Foster-Johnson is a veteran software developer who works daily with Linux, Unix®, Windows®, and various other systems. A seasoned writer, he is also the author of Graphical Applications with Tcl and Tk, Perl Modules, and coauthor of Teach Yourself Linux.

Product Details

• Paperback: 504 pages
• Publisher: *Red Hat; 1 edition (March 1, 2003)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0764549650
• ISBN-13: 978-0764549656
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 7.4 x 1.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.7 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (3 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,116,602 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 25 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Comprehensive rpm guide, July 7, 2003

By 

P. Norton (New York, NY USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Red Hat RPM Guide (Paperback)

Its been a long time since Maximum RPM was written. In the mean time the rpm package tool has grown from a command-line tool and C programming API into much more. Its become the base for many linux distributions, and companies are using it to deploy linux throughout their IT infrastructure.

The parts of redhat's new RPM book that I most appreciated have been the in-depth examination of the modern rpm .spec file, from which packages get built, and the descriptions of the perl and python API's for the rpm interface. Documentation for these areas have been lacking, and this book covers them thoroughly.

This book worked very well as a reference to aide my company's linux deployment.

Speaking only for myself,

-Peter

16 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Badly organized, missing information and overly verbose., February 22, 2005

By 

Alan "add1" (San Diego, CA United States) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Red Hat RPM Guide (Paperback)

Having used rpms for several years I bought this book with the goal of learning to create an RPM for a specific application. This book provides very little of value in this regard.

Of 4 sections in the book, the first and largest (120 pages) is devoted to how to use the rpm command itself, but really provides no information that isn't in the man page on a standard RedHat distribution.

The second section covers how to create an RPM, and was the section that I was interested in. The section continues in the same tone as the previous section, apparently failing to realize that programmers will be using the rpmbuild command and some rudiment of basic knowledge can be assumed. Worse no explanation is given of the process that rpmbuild uses, and much of the pertinent information is skipped altogether. For instance use of the %pre %post commands is documented only in the appendix at the end of the book, and not in this section at all. (And the index has no mention of this feature at all.)

The 3rd section covers the RPM API, but I could imagine no reason why anyone other than the writers of the rpm and rpmbuild tool would want to use this, and they would certainly not want to use this book. At the least the book should have a compelling rationale for why this might be useful, and once again the level of the tone seems inappropriate for some reasonably technical information.

The 4th section is called "Extending RPM" and covers topics such as cross platform development. I never read this, but I can imagine that some might find this useful.

The appendicies do provide useful information.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Excellent but out of print book, November 22, 2010

By 

Duncan Brown (Cambridge, MA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Red Hat RPM Guide (Paperback)

it's been thirteen years since maximum rpm & seven years since this book but it's still relevant for anyone running RHEL 5 or CentOS 5. if you absolutely need a hard copy version of this book don't hesitate to buy it here. i'm not going to go into the details as to why, the other reviewers have done a great job.

if you don't feel like shelling out $60+ for a $20 book just google the book's title, it's been published on the web by the author.