Fedora Linux

Sendmail, you can install the sendmail-doc package.

To see all of the files installed by the package that installed /usr/lib/libcdda_interface.so :

$ rpm -qlf /usr/lib/libcdda_interface.so
/usr/lib/libcdda_interface.so
/usr/lib/libcdda_interface.so.0
/usr/lib/libcdda_interface.so.0.9.8
/usr/lib/libcdda_paranoia.so
/usr/lib/libcdda_paranoia.so.0
/usr/lib/libcdda_paranoia.so.0.9.8

Or to see those files along with the package name:

$ rpm -qf --filesbypkg /usr/lib/libcdda_interface.so
cdparanoia-libs /usr/lib/libcdda_interface.so
cdparanoia-libs /usr/lib/libcdda_interface.so.0
cdparanoia-libs /usr/lib/libcdda_interface.so.0.9.8
cdparanoia-libs /usr/lib/libcdda_paranoia.so
cdparanoia-libs /usr/lib/libcdda_paranoia.so.0
cdparanoia-libs /usr/lib/libcdda_paranoia.so.0.9.8

To see all of the other capabilities provided by the package that provides the capability perl :

$ rpm -q --whatprovides perl --provides
APItest.so
B.so
Base64.so
Byte.so
ByteLoader.so
...(Lines snipped)...
perl(warnings::register) = 1.00
re.so
scalar.so
shared.so
threads.so
via.so
perl = 3:5.8.6-15

To see the scripts that will be triggered by removing sendmail :

$ rpm -q --triggeredby sendmail --triggers
triggerpostun scriptlet (using /bin/sh) -- sendmail < 8.10.0
/sbin/chkconfig --add sendmail
triggerpostun scriptlet (using /bin/sh) -- sendmail < 8.11.6-11
/usr/sbin/alternatives --auto mta

To list the files in the uninstalled RPM package file a52dec-0.7.4- 4.fr.i386.rpm :

$ rpm -qlp a52dec-0.7.4- 4.fr.i386.rpm
/usr/bin/a52dec
/usr/bin/extract_a52
/usr/share/doc/a52dec-0.7.4
/usr/share/doc/a52dec-0.7.4/AUTHORS
/usr/share/doc/a52dec-0.7.4/COPYING
/usr/share/doc/a52dec-0.7.4/ChangeLog
/usr/share/doc/a52dec-0.7.4/NEWS
/usr/share/doc/a52dec-0.7.4/README
/usr/share/doc/a52dec-0.7.4/TODO
/usr/share/doc/a52dec-0.7.4/liba52.txt
/usr/share/man/man1/a52dec.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/extract_a52.1.gz

If that RPM were on a remote web server or FTP server, you could substitute the URI for the filename:

$ rpm -qlp  ftp://ftp.ntua.gr/pub/video/videolan/testing/vlc-0.7.0-test1/rpm/rh9-fc1/rh9-fc1/vlc/a52dec- 0.7.4-4.fr.i386.rpm
/usr/bin/a52dec
/usr/bin/extract_a52
...(Lines snipped)...

5.1.2. How Does It Work?

RPM packages are compressed archives of files with metadata. The archive is in cpio format, with gzip compression; the metadata is stored in a flexible, easily extensible format for forward- and (limited) backward-compatibility.

When a package is installed, the metadata is copied to the RPM database. If this were not done, it would be necessary to keep all of the original package files in storage to find out about installed packages, and queries would run very slowly because hundreds of files would have to be individually opened and searched.

The RPM database is stored in several files in /var/lib/rpm . These databases are in the indexed DBM/GDBM format, which is also used for other configuration databases such as /etc/aliases.db ; this indexed format permits high-speed searching.

5.1.3. What About...

5.1.3.1. ...converting an RPM to a plain archive?

The rpm2cpio command will convert an RPM package to a cpio archive: