19.0 Understanding RPM Packages

The RPM Package Manager is a system used to manage software packages. You can use this package format to distribute the software packages either in the precompiled binary form or the source code form. The RPM packages are usually targeted at particular distributions such as SLES 9 or SLED 9. An RPM package file is identified with a .rpm extension.

For example, the package format for the file novell-zenworks-install-7.2-2-0.0.0.i386 is novell-zenworks-install-7.2-2-0.0.0.i386.rpm.

Review the following section to understand how to install the RPM packages: