how can do you change .rpm into .tar

[Once-Ler]

How would I change and .rpm file into a .tar file.

I'm using redhat/mandrake and it would be helpful if someone could tell me how to do this change.

Thanks again

[fuzzy]

First thing... where you got that rpm package (i.e. downloaded it) it's likely there was an accompanying tarball of that same package.
If not, then the only other thing I can think of is alien. I believe you can use alien to convert rpms to tarballs.
Since I use debian, I can't say that for sure. I use it sometimes to convert either tarballs or rpms to debs. Not often, though.
But perhaps alien will work in your situation.

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Politicians have one thing in common with baby diapers...
They both need to be changed regularly for the same reason.
--Anon.

[X0lution]

I believe an RPM file is a precompiled binary. A tarball on the other hand is just a format for archiving files (taking abunch of files and putting them together, like the windows zip format).

I think what you're asking is how to take a program distributed as an RPM and convert that into a tarball. As far as I know there is no way. You could put the RPM into a tarball (though there's no point to put just one files into a tarball). Normally if you download something as a tarball, it needs to be compiled. If you download it as an rpm, it's already compiled. Get it?

[X0lution]

I believe an RPM file is a precompiled binary. A tarball on the other hand is just a format for archiving files (taking abunch of files and putting them together, like the windows zip format).

I think what you're asking is how to take a program distributed as an RPM and convert that into a tarball. As far as I know there is no way. You could put the RPM into a tarball (though there's no point to put just one files into a tarball). Normally if you download something as a tarball, it needs to be compiled. If you download it as an rpm, it's already compiled. Get it?

[ColdPack]

Hey, look what I found on Freshmeat!
http://freshmeat.net/projects/rpm2tar/

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"Sometimes I think war is God's way of teaching us geography."
--- Paul Rodriguez