.RPM Install Problems

[blaufeld]

Sorry for the newbie question, but I'm running Linux only from 10
days...
Here it comes: I have Mandrake 8.0, if I try to install a program in RPM
format, downloaded from the net or found on a magazine CD, it starts
the nice RPM installer, it checks everything, install the prog then say
"Enjoy".
Then... WHERE IS THE NEW PROG ON THE MENU? I can't find it... And, 'cos
it is not like Win, there's not
a single new directory with the prog name... I feel very silly...
Someone can help me?

:)

[posterboy]

Yeah, sometimes that is confusing. If you have a pretty good notion of the name of what you just installed, simply try typing it, it's likely that you are right. Do NOT expect to find rpm's recently installed in your menu's, a very few pkgs do that, or even try to. Reason: How does the packager know what desktop you are running? To see if the executable is in your path, use "which name-of-file", and that will display the path. Now, to see WHAT the rpm pkg installed try this. rpm -q (nameofpkg) --filesbypkg which will list out everything that got installed. A great many things wind up in /usr/bin, but, of course, not all. That list will clue you on where the executable went.
HTH, Ray

[Malakin]

You might find it a little easier if you throw the p in there so it looks like this:

"rpm -qp filename.rpm --filesbypkg"

then you can use the filename instead of the package name which can be confusing to new people and it works well if you are trying to list several packages at a time.

If you want the output page by page you can add " | less" onto the end of the command.

Quite a few programs do install themselves in the menus these days but it's not always obvious where they put themselves.