linuxcentosfedorarhelberkeley-db

How to read var/lib/rpm/Packages content


I have 'Packages' file in path var/lib/rpm in my Centos:8 based image. How can I read/ get 'Packages' file content

As I read in some documentation that this file is of type berkeley DB.. not sure about this.


Solution

  • You may use the "rpm" python library like below, it outputs the same result as

    rpm -qa --dbpath /some/path/to/rpm/db
    

    in JSON format

    you maybe ignore the _db_backend for now as it's only value is "bdb"

    import sys
    import rpm
    import json
    
    if (len(sys.argv) != 3):
        print ('invalid amount of input arguments!')
        sys.exit()
    
    # user inputs
    dbtype = sys.argv[1]
    dbpath = sys.argv[2]
    
    # add macro to be used by rpm
    rpm.addMacro("_db_backend", dbtype)
    rpm.addMacro("_dbpath", dbpath)
    
    # Open database
    ts = rpm.TransactionSet()
    ts.openDB()
    
    # remove macro for future cases
    rpm.delMacro("_db_backend")
    rpm.delMacro("_dbpath")
    
    allPackages = []
    # retrieve all packages from BDB
    mi = ts.dbMatch()
    
    # build JSON object from all packages for easier parsing
    for hdr in mi:
        pkgDict = {}
        allPackages.append(pkgDict)
        pkgDict['NAME'] = hdr[rpm.RPMTAG_NAME]
        pkgDict['VERSION'] = hdr[rpm.RPMTAG_VERSION]
        pkgDict['RELEASE'] = hdr[rpm.RPMTAG_RELEASE]
        pkgDict['ARCH'] = hdr[rpm.RPMTAG_ARCH]
    
    print (json.dumps(allPackages))