A Quick Reference Guide to urpmi [LWN.net]

January 28, 2004

This article was contributed by Ladislav Bodnar

"urpmi", sometimes referred to as "urpm" or "User RPM", was first introduced into Mandrake Linux 7.0, released in January 2000. It was meant to be a powerful front-end to the "rpm" command. It came with dependency resolution, search and other functions similar to the Debian's "apt" tool, as well as a honorable intention to the end all RPM-related headaches. But despite urpmi being Free Software, it did not find its way into any other distribution, and even those that were originally derived from Mandrake (such as Alt Linux or PCLinuxOS) have been quick to replace urpmi with one of the apt ports for RPM-based distributions. Nevertheless, Mandrake's effort at making RPMs more digestible and pleasant to use deserves praise. Here is a quick rundown on the purpose of urpmi, its commands and functions.

Issuing a urpmi command performs several tasks. Firstly, it checks whether the relevant package has been installed. Secondly, it determines whether the package exists in the database of installable packages. Thirdly, it retrieves all packages, which the package in question depends on, marks them for installation and presents them to the user for approval. Lastly, it installs the package from a specified source, such as a CD, another machine on the local network, or a remote FTP/HTTP server. Besides these basic functions, urpmi is also capable of upgrading or removing packages, displaying information about packages and searching the package database. All of the above can be accomplished either on the command line or in graphical environment.

This is the list of commands available for manipulating RPM packages under Mandrake Linux:

urpmi - installs or upgrades a package
urpme - removes (erases) a package
urpmq - searches for a package (both installed and available)
urpmf - searches for a filename in all known packages (both installed and available)
urpmi.addmedia - adds a new source of RPMs to the urpmi database
urpmi.removemedia - removes an existing package source from the urpmi database
urpmi.update - visits all the previously defined sources of RPMs and updates the package lists if necessary

There are several urpmi configuration files; some of the more important among them are:

/etc/urpmi/urpmi.cfg - contains information about all urpmi sources, including name and path to each source
/etc/urpmi/skip.list - contains names of packages that will not be automatically updated
/etc/urpmi/inst.list - specifies which packages must be installed rather than updated
/var/lib/urpmi/list.* - lists all packages available to urpmi
/var/lib/urpmi/hdlist.* - lists headers of all packages available to urpmi
/var/lib/urpmi/synthesis.hdlist.* - contains dependency information for all available RPM packages

Setting up package sources for retrieval via the Internet is very simple with Mandrake's graphical configuration tools, but the command line can do the job equally well. First, let's retrieve the list of sources from urpmi.cfg:

urpmq --list-media

Now we can add new sources from the official Mandrake repositories, as well as the ever useful PLF repository. This can be accomplished with the following commands:

urpmi.addmedia main ftp://[...]/mandrake/9.2/i586/Mandrake/RPMS \
    with ../base/hdlist.cz
urpmi.addmedia contrib ftp://[...]/mandrake/9.2/i586/Mandrake/RPMS2
urpmi.addmedia jpackage ftp://[...]/mandrake/9.2/i586/Mandrake/RPMS3
urpmi.addmedia --update updates ftp://[...]/mandrake/updates/9.2/RPMS \
    with ../base/hdlist.cz
urpmi.addmedia plf ftp://knight.zarb.org/pub/plf/mandrake/9.2 with hdlist.cz

Those who prefer to be on the very bleeding edge of Mandrake development might want to track the "Cooker", or Mandrake's development branch:

urpmi.addmedia cooker-main \
    ftp://[...]/mandrake-devel/cooker/i586/Mandrake/RPMS with ../base/hdlist.cz
urpmi.addmedia cooker-contrib ftp://[...]/mandrake-devel/contrib/i586

Installing a new package or upgrading an existing package is a simple matter of issuing a urpmi <package_name> command, while uninstalling is done with a urpme <package_name> command. In cases where the specified <package_name> doesn't exist, urpmi will attempt to find a package with a similar name, so even typing errors are taken care of. An even better option is to install the "bash-completion" package, which is capable of suggesting package names following the urpmi command and the first few letters of a package name.

Upgrading an entire Mandrake Linux system can be accomplished with the following two commands:

urpmi.update -a
urpmi --auto --auto-select

The first of the above commands will get the list of available packages for upgrade, while the second one will download and upgrade all installed packages to their latest versions. The RPM packages are downloaded to the /var/cache/urpmi/rpms directory.

As mentioned earlier, urpmi also provides a set of powerful search commands. Here are some useful examples:

urpmq --list - contains information about all urpmi sources, including name and path to each source
urpmq -d <package_name> - lists dependencies of <package_name>
urpmq -f <package_name> - outputs <package_name>, inclusive of version and architecture
urpmq -i <package_name> - outputs useful information about <package_name>
urpmq -y <search_string> - searches the package database for packages that include <search_string>
urpmf <file_name> - finds the RPM package providing the specified file <file_name>

It goes without saying that standard rpm commands, such as rpm -qa can be executed as well. In conjunction with the various urpm* commands, they provide a powerful set of tools for managing software on Mandrake Linux.

(Log in to post comments)

Some more urpmi tricks:

Posted Jan 29, 2004 13:54 UTC (Thu) by juanjux (guest, #11652) [Link]

Installing some packages from cooker without upgrading the whole stable
distribution:

I usually keep the Cooker media added to my sources, so I can install a
package from the "unstable" Mandrake distribution if I need to (for
example I currently have KDE 3.2 and kernel 2.6 installed from cooker).
But I don't want my entire distribution to upgrade to cooker, so I have
two alias defined in my .bashrc:

alias urpmi='/usr/sbin/urpmi --excludemedia cooker --wget --noclean'
alias urpmico='/usr/sbin/urpmi --media cooker --wget --noclean'

The first command don't install things from cooker and the other is the
one I use to install packages (and his deps) from cooker. Also, you have
to take care to don't install cooker packages if you're using the GUI
tools (in the description on the right there is a field called "media").

The --wget parameter tells urpmi to use wget for downloading of packages
instead of curl, and I have a continue = on opcion enabled in my
/etc/wgetrc so I can freely interrupt a package download by urpmi (say,
OpenOffice.org) and when I issue the command again it doesn't starts
downloading the entire package again. The --noclean parameter tells urpmi
to don't delete the package in /var/cache/urpmi/rpms after they've been
installed, so I can copy them to my laptop and upgrade that too without
downloading (again) all the packages. But then, you've to remember to
delete the packages there from time to time.

Having being a Debian user for 8 years (I still use it on the second
computer in my home) I doesn't miss apt-get too much in my Mandrake
except for two details of urpmi:

* There is not an option for urpmq to search not only in package names
but also in package descriptions, like apt-cache search does.

* It informs you of how many MB the packages you're about to upgrade or
install are going to use, but it doesn't says how many MB you'll have to
download in total (I've discovered that this is usually about 50% of the
first) or what is the ETA for finishing all the downloads. apt-get gives
you this information.