extracting rpms to non-root directories

[Paul Howarth]

Chris Jones wrote:
> Hi,
> 
> I'm trying to extract the contents of an rpm to a non-standard place 
> (i.e. non-root) to just get access to the files.
> 
> I have in my ~/.rpmmacros
> 
> %packager %(echo "$USER")
> %_topdir %(echo "$HOME")/rpmbuild
> 
> and this seems to do the trick for "src" rpms. ie.
> 
> pcdn > rpm -ivh /tmp/arts-1.1.3-2.2.src.rpm
> warning: /tmp/arts-1.1.3-2.2.src.rpm: V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, key ID 
> db42a60e
>    1:arts                   ########################################### 
> [100%]
> 
> however, I want to extract the devel files, but if I try the same thing 
> for this rpm, I get
> 
> pcdn > rpm -ivh /tmp/xmms-devel-1.2.7-22.1.p.i386.rpm
> warning: /tmp/xmms-devel-1.2.7-22.1.p.i386.rpm: V3 DSA signature: NOKEY, 
> key ID 0c98ff9d
> error: cannot get exclusive lock on /var/lib/rpm/Packages
> error: cannot open Packages index using db3 - Operation not permitted (1)
> error: cannot open Packages database in /var/lib/rpm
> 
> what do I need to do to just extract the files in the devel rpm ?

Install fedora-rpmdevtools from Extras and use the fedora-extract program:

$ fedora-extract libspf2-progs-1.0.4-10.i386.rpm
libspf2-progs-1.0.4-10/usr/bin/spf_example
libspf2-progs-1.0.4-10/usr/bin/spf_example_2mx
libspf2-progs-1.0.4-10/usr/bin/spfd.libspf2
libspf2-progs-1.0.4-10/usr/bin/spfquery.libspf2
libspf2-progs-1.0.4-10/usr/bin/spftest

Paul.