Quick Start Guide

zypper refresh -fdb
This forces a complete refresh and rebuild of the database, including a forced
download of raw metadata.
9.1.8 Zypper Rollback Feature on btrfs File System
If the btrfs le system is used on the root partition and snapper is installed, zypper
automatically calls snapper (via script installed by snapper) when committing changes
to the le system to create appropriate le system snapshots. These snapshots can
be used for reverting any changes made by zypper. For more information about
snapper, see man snapper.
Zypper (and YaST) currently only make snapshots of the root lesystem. Other sub-
volumes cannot be congured. This feature is not supported on the default le system.
9.1.9 For More Information
For more information on managing software from the command line, enter zypper
help, zypper help command or refer to the zypper(8) manpage. For a complete and
detailed command reference, including cheat sheets with the most important com-
mands, and information on how to use Zypper in scripts and applications, refer to
http://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Zypper_usage. A list of software changes for the latest
openSUSE version can be found at . [http://en.opensuse.org/openSUSE:Zypper
versions] .
9.2 RPM—the Package Manager
RPM (RPM Package Manager) is used for managing software packages. Its main
commands are rpm and rpmbuild. The powerful RPM database can be queried by the
users, system administrators and package builders for detailed information about
the installed software.
Essentially, rpm has ve modes: installing, uninstalling (or updating) software pack-
ages, rebuilding the RPM database, querying RPM bases or individual RPM archives,
integrity checking of packages and signing packages. rpmbuild can be used to build
installable packages from pristine sources.
Installable RPM archives are packed in a special binary format. These archives consist
of the program les to install and certain meta information used during the installation
by rpm to congure the software package or stored in the RPM database for documen-
tation purposes. RPM archives normally have the extension .rpm.
TIP: Software Development Packages
For a number of packages, the components needed for software development
(libraries, headers, include les, etc.) have been put into separate packages.
These development packages are only needed if you want to compile software
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