RPM2ARCHIVE(1) General Commands Manual RPM2ARCHIVE(1)

rpm2archive - Create tar or cpio archive from RPM Package Manager (RPM) package

rpm2archive [options] [PACKAGE_FILE] ...

rpm2archive converts RPM package files to other archive formats.

If the standard output is a regular file or a pipe, the archive is written to the standard output. If the standard output is a terminal, the output is written to a file by the same name, appended with a .tgz or .cpio.gz suffix when compressed or .tar or .cpio otherwise depending on the format. The output is compressed in the gzip(1) format by default.

rpm2archive does not verify package-level signatures or checksums, but it does verify the per-file checksums.

Supports RPM package formats 3, 4 and 6.

PACKAGE_FILE

A binary or source RPM package.

If no arguments are present, or a dash (-) is given as an argument, data is read from the standard input.

-n, --nocompression

Generate an uncompressed archive. If in the file creation mode, use .tar as postfix of the filename.

-f, --format=<FORMAT>

Generate archive in specified FORMAT:
  • pax: Restricted Portable Archive Exchange as used by tar(1) (default)
  • cpio: The "new" ASCII cpio(5) format. Note that this format has a 4GB limit on the individual file size.

On success, 0 is returned, a nonzero failure code otherwise.

rpm2archive glint-1.0-1.i386.rpm | tar -xvz

Extract glint-1.0-1.i386.rpm package contents with tar(1).

rpm2archive --nocompression --format=cpio glint-1.0-1.i386.rpm | cpio -idv

Extract glint-1.0-1.i386.rpm package contents as an uncompressed cpio(5), compatible with rpm2cpio(1) output.

rpm2archive glint-1.0-1.i386.rpm ; tar -xvz glint-1.0-1.i386.rpm.tgz

Extract glint-1.0-1.i386.rpm package contents into an archive named glint-1.0-1.i386.rpm.tgz and extract the written archive with tar(1).

cat glint-1.0-1.i386.rpm | rpm2archive - | tar -tvz

Feed glint-1.0-1.i386.rpm package into rpm2archive via standard input, and list contents with tar(1).

rpm2cpio(1), rpm(8)

2026-01-08 RPM 6.0.1