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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-28T05:18:45+00:00

On linux can we repackage a installed rpm if so how.I remember that the

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On linux can we repackage a installed rpm if so how.I remember that the a rpm can be generated from the installed binaries

  rpm -??? > my.rpm

Also the later i.e, the newer rpm should work on a different machine

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  1. Editorial Team

    This is possible, but not with the rpm command. I wrote a perl script that does this; it crafts a spec file based on the outputs of rpm -q and does a “build” which just copies the installed files from the system.

    You can find it here: https://github.com/cormander/rogue-beret-tools/blob/master/scripts/rpm-repack

    Usage example, re-packaging the mailx rpm:

    Query it:

    $ rpm -ql mailx
/bin/mail
/etc/mail.rc
/usr/bin/Mail
/usr/lib/mail.help
/usr/lib/mail.tildehelp
/usr/share/man/man1/Mail.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/mail.1.gz

    Repack it:

    $ ./rpm-repack -p mailx
Executing(%install): /bin/sh -e /var/tmp/rpm-tmp.9773
+ umask 022
+ cd /usr/src/redhat/BUILD
+ /usr/lib/rpm/brp-compress
+ /usr/lib/rpm/brp-strip
+ /usr/lib/rpm/brp-strip-static-archive
+ /usr/lib/rpm/brp-strip-comment-note
Processing files: mailx-8.1.1-44.2.2
Provides: mailx
Requires(rpmlib): rpmlib(CompressedFileNames) <= 3.0.4-1 rpmlib(PayloadFilesHavePrefix) <= 4.0-1
Requires: libc.so.6 libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.0) libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.1) libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.3) libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.3.4) libc.so.6(GLIBC_2.4) rtld(GNU_HASH)
Checking for unpackaged file(s): /usr/lib/rpm/check-files /tmp/tlkN4yrYEi
Wrote: ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/i386/mailx-8.1.1-44.2.2.i386.rpm

    Query the newly built package:

    $ rpm -qpl ~/rpmbuild/RPMS/i386/mailx-8.1.1-44.2.2.i386.rpm
/bin/mail
/etc/mail.rc
/usr/bin/Mail
/usr/lib/mail.help
/usr/lib/mail.tildehelp
/usr/share/man/man1/Mail.1.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/mail.1.gz

    The code isn’t at all elegant, but functional. It does copy a lot of the rpm info (everything from rpm -qi and most of the scripts), but it isn’t by any means comprehensive. Also, it can’t copy the GPG signature, nor will it have the same checksums as the original RPM file.

    NOTE: This is not a “proper” way to build and distribute RPM packages, and was mainly written for troubleshooting and educational purposes.

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