rpm2cpio

Convert an RPM package to a cpio archive and save it as file.cpio in the current directory

$ rpm2cpio [path/to/file.rpm]

rpm2cpio rpmfile

rpmfile
    The path to the RPM file from which to extract the CPIO archive. If omitted, rpm2cpio reads the RPM data from standard input.

The rpm2cpio command extracts the contents of an RPM (Red Hat Package Manager) archive into a CPIO (Copy In/Out) archive. This allows you to access the individual files contained within the RPM package without actually installing the package. This is useful for examining package contents, extracting specific files, or converting the RPM to a different archive format.

It takes the RPM file either from standard input or as an argument and writes a CPIO archive to standard output. The CPIO archive can then be piped to other utilities like cpio itself to extract the files to a directory.

rpm2cpio does not handle dependency resolution or installation. It simply extracts the archived files from the RPM. It's also important to remember that this command is primarily for extracting the data archive and may not properly handle RPM-specific metadata or scripts.

To extract a CPIO archive from an RPM file named 'example.rpm':
rpm2cpio example.rpm > example.cpio

To extract all files from 'example.rpm' to a directory 'extract':
rpm2cpio example.rpm | cpio -idmv --directory extract

To pipe an rpm to rpm2cpio (for example downloading a file with wget):
wget -O- 'http://example.com/package.rpm' | rpm2cpio | cpio -idmv

rpm2cpio has been part of the RPM ecosystem for a long time, serving as a crucial tool for inspecting and manipulating RPM packages without requiring installation. Its functionality has remained relatively stable, primarily focused on its core task of RPM to CPIO conversion. The command is often found in minimal linux environments as it doesn't need large libraries for RPM dependencies.

rpm(8), cpio(1), ar(1)