RPM Verification

Verifying an installed package compares information about that package with information from the RPM database on your system. The --verify (or -v) switch checks the size, MD5 checksum, permissions, type, owner, and group of each file in the package. Here are a few examples:

• Verify all files. Naturally, this may take a long time on your system. (Of course, the rpm -va command performs the same function.)

  # rpm --verify -a

• Verify all files within a package against a downloaded RPM.

  # rpm -V -p /root/Desktop/inn-2.4.3-6.i386.rpm

• Verify a file associated with a particular package.

  # rpm --verify --file /bin/ls

If the files or packages check out, you will see no output. Any output means that a file or package is different from the original. There's no need to panic if you see a few changes; after all, you do change configuration files. There are eight tests. If there's been a change, the output is a string of up to eight characters, each of which tells you what happened during each test. If you see a dot (.), that test passed. The following example shows /bin/vi with an incorrect group ID assignment:

# rpm --verify --file /bin/vi
......G. /bin/vi

Table: lists the failure codes and their meanings.

 
rpm --verify  Codes: 
 

 
Failure Code 
 
Meaning 
 

 
5
 
MD5 checksum
 
S
 
File size
 
L
 
Symbolic link
 
T
 
File modification time
 
D
 
Device
 
U
 
User
 
G
 
Group
 
M
 
Mode

biOos