Description of problem: If you got for instance both the i386 and the x86_64 version of a package installed, rpm -qa lists them both with the same name. So how to proceed ifyou only want to deinstall the i386 version ? It turns out that you can append the architecture after the package name, ie: [beekman@zero]$ rpm -q zlib zlib-1.1.4-10.EL3 zlib-1.1.4-10.EL3 [beekman@zero]$ rpm -q zlib --qf '%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}-%{ARCH}\n' zlib-1.1.4-10.EL3-x86_64 zlib-1.1.4-10.EL3-i386 [beekman@zero ~]# rpm -e --test --nodeps zlib error: "zlib" specifies multiple packages [beekman@zero ~]# rpm -e --test --nodeps zlib.i386 [beekman@zero ~]# rpm -e --test --nodeps zlib.x86_64 [beekman@zero ~]# rpm -e --test --nodeps zlib-1.1.4-10.EL3.x86_64 this functionality should be added to the manpage.
This is more than a bit embarrassing... but RHEL5 has entered development stage 2 ruling RFE out for updates. I at least added the description to the man page in the upstream repository. Thanks for pointing out that this was missing.