How do I extract the contents of an rpm?

Question

Did you try the rpm2cpio commmand? See the example below:

$ rpm2cpio php-5.1.4-1.esp1.x86_64.rpm | cpio -idmv

/etc/httpd/conf.d/php.conf  
./etc/php.d  
./etc/php.ini  
./usr/bin/php  
./usr/bin/php-cgi  
etc 

$ mkdir packagecontents; cd packagecontents
$ rpm2cpio ../foo.rpm | cpio -idmv
$ find . 

For Reference: the cpio arguments are

-i = extract
-d = make directories
-m = preserve modification time
-v = verbose

I found the answer over here: lontar's answer

For those who do not have rpm2cpio, here is the ancient rpm2cpio.sh script that extracts the payload from a *.rpm package.

Reposted for posterity … and the next generation.

Invoke like this: ./rpm2cpio.sh .rpm | cpio -dimv

#!/bin/sh

pkg=$1
if [ "$pkg" = "" -o ! -e "$pkg" ]; then
    echo "no package supplied" 1>&2
    exit 1
fi

leadsize=96
o=`expr $leadsize + 8`
set `od -j $o -N 8 -t u1 $pkg`
il=`expr 256 \* \( 256 \* \( 256 \* $2 + $3 \) + $4 \) + $5`
dl=`expr 256 \* \( 256 \* \( 256 \* $6 + $7 \) + $8 \) + $9`
# echo "sig il: $il dl: $dl"

sigsize=`expr 8 + 16 \* $il + $dl`
o=`expr $o + $sigsize + \( 8 - \( $sigsize \% 8 \) \) \% 8 + 8`
set `od -j $o -N 8 -t u1 $pkg`
il=`expr 256 \* \( 256 \* \( 256 \* $2 + $3 \) + $4 \) + $5`
dl=`expr 256 \* \( 256 \* \( 256 \* $6 + $7 \) + $8 \) + $9`
# echo "hdr il: $il dl: $dl"

hdrsize=`expr 8 + 16 \* $il + $dl`
o=`expr $o + $hdrsize`
EXTRACTOR="dd if=$pkg ibs=$o skip=1"

COMPRESSION=`($EXTRACTOR |file -) 2>/dev/null`
if echo $COMPRESSION |grep -q gzip; then
        DECOMPRESSOR=gunzip
elif echo $COMPRESSION |grep -q bzip2; then
        DECOMPRESSOR=bunzip2
elif echo $COMPRESSION |grep -iq xz; then # xz and XZ safe
        DECOMPRESSOR=unxz
elif echo $COMPRESSION |grep -q cpio; then
        DECOMPRESSOR=cat
else
        # Most versions of file don't support LZMA, therefore we assume
        # anything not detected is LZMA
        DECOMPRESSOR=`which unlzma 2>/dev/null`
        case "$DECOMPRESSOR" in
            /* ) ;;
            *  ) DECOMPRESSOR=`which lzmash 2>/dev/null`
             case "$DECOMPRESSOR" in
                     /* ) DECOMPRESSOR="lzmash -d -c" ;;
                     *  ) DECOMPRESSOR=cat ;;
                 esac
                 ;;
        esac
fi

$EXTRACTOR 2>/dev/null | $DECOMPRESSOR

Sometimes you can encounter an issue with intermediate RPM archive:

cpio: Malformed number
cpio: Malformed number
cpio: Malformed number
. . .
cpio: premature end of archive

That means it could be packed, these days it is LZMA2 compression as usual, by xz:

rpm2cpio <file>.rpm | xz -d | cpio -idmv

otherwise you could try:

rpm2cpio <file>.rpm | lzma -d | cpio -idmv

Most distributions have installed the GUI app file-roller which unpacks tar, zip, rpm and many more.

file-roller --extract-here package.rpm

This will extract the contents in the current directory.

7-zip understands most kinds of archives, including rpm and the included cpio.

You can simply do tar -xvf <rpm file> as well!