Listing packages in Yum that depend on another installed package

Question

I am trying to install a 3rd-party RPM package on RHEL5 which depends on version 3.4 of sqlite. According to Yum I already have 3.3.6 installed.

Is there a way to list the installed packages that depend on sqlite 3.3.6?

Answer 1

Answer

repoquery -q --installed --whatrequires sqlite

Explanations

There is another command, rpm -q --whatrequires sqlite, but it doesn't really work since it only reports dependencies on package names.

On the contrary, repoquery also looks for non-explicit dependencies. Excerpt from manpage:

   --alldeps
          When used with --whatrequires, look for non-explicit dependencies in addition to explicit ones (e.g. files and Provides  in  addition  to  package  names).
          This is the default.

Example

Let's take package libdb.

# rpm -q --whatrequires libdb
no package requires libdb

If we trust rpm, no package depends on libdb so we should be able to remove it smoothly. However...

# yum remove -y libdb
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package libdb.x86_64 0:5.3.21-19.el7 will be erased
--> Processing Dependency: libdb(x86-64) = 5.3.21-19.el7 for package: libdb-utils-5.3.21-19.el7.x86_64
--> Processing Dependency: libdb-5.3.so()(64bit) for package: pam-1.1.8-12.el7_1.1.x86_64
--> Processing Dependency: libdb-5.3.so()(64bit) for package: rpm-4.11.3-17.el7.x86_64
--> Processing Dependency: libdb-5.3.so()(64bit) for package: rpm-libs-4.11.3-17.el7.x86_64
--> Processing Dependency: libdb-5.3.so()(64bit) for package: libdb-utils-5.3.21-19.el7.x86_64
--> Processing Dependency: libdb-5.3.so()(64bit) for package: cyrus-sasl-lib-2.1.26-20.el7_2.x86_64
--> Processing Dependency: libdb-5.3.so()(64bit) for package: rpm-python-4.11.3-17.el7.x86_64
--> Processing Dependency: libdb-5.3.so()(64bit) for package: python-libs-2.7.5-39.el7_2.x86_64
--> Processing Dependency: libdb-5.3.so()(64bit) for package: rpm-devel-4.11.3-17.el7.x86_64
--> Processing Dependency: libdb-5.3.so()(64bit) for package: 2:postfix-2.10.1-6.el7.x86_64
--> Processing Dependency: libdb-5.3.so()(64bit) for package: rpm-build-libs-4.11.3-17.el7.x86_64
--> Processing Dependency: libdb-5.3.so()(64bit) for package: iproute-3.10.0-54.el7_2.1.x86_64
--> Running transaction check
. . .
. . .
. . .
Error: Trying to remove "systemd", which is protected
Error: Trying to remove "yum", which is protected

As you can see some other packages were depending not directly on package libdb, but on file libdb-5.3.so()(64bit) provided by it.

Finally, when using repoquery we get the real list of packages depending on libdb:

# repoquery -q --installed --whatrequires libdb
cyrus-sasl-lib-0:2.1.26-20.el7_2.x86_64
iproute-0:3.10.0-54.el7_2.1.x86_64
libdb-utils-0:5.3.21-19.el7.x86_64
pam-0:1.1.8-12.el7_1.1.x86_64
postfix-2:2.10.1-6.el7.x86_64
python-libs-0:2.7.5-39.el7_2.x86_64
rpm-0:4.11.3-17.el7.x86_64
rpm-build-libs-0:4.11.3-17.el7.x86_64
rpm-devel-0:4.11.3-17.el7.x86_64
rpm-libs-0:4.11.3-17.el7.x86_64
rpm-python-0:4.11.3-17.el7.x86_64

Answer 2

The rpm option you want is:

rpm -q --whatrequires sqlite

Edited: added --installed per discussion in other answers/comments

Edited: removed --installed as it is an invalid option for rpm

Answer 3

For dnf (new version of yum) you may try with repoquery wrapper command:

dnf repoquery --whatrequires sqlite

If it is not available you may install it with command:

dnf -y install dnf-plugins-core

Answer 4

You could also try this command out.

repoquery --whatrequires sqlite

I got this command from ServerFault and also from The Fedora Forums.

Answer 5

I think what you really want to know is "what are the packages which require sqlite-3.3.6, but won't be happy with sqlite-3.4.z" ... and the only good way of finding that out, is to try it. Like:

echo | yum upgrade sqlite

Answer 6

As Wes Hardaker said, a good built-in method is by using rpm -q --whatrequires <package>. The thing is, rpm operates on capabilities for dependency resolution, not just simply on packages, as e.g. dpkg does in the Debian/Ubuntu family of Linux distributions. As others have noted, simply doing rpm -q --whatrequires sqlite doesn't tell the whole story, hence why some suggested using repoquery. repoquery, however, isn't installed by default in RHEL/CentOS 7 minimal (maybe desktop too?), so it may not be available for everyone.

A user can do rpm -q --provides <pkgname> to see all the capabilities a package provides, then use rpm -q --whatrequires <capability> to see what installed packages require that capability. This info can be succinctly queried using a BASH one-liner (separated here into two lines for length):

capabilities=($(rpm -q --provides sqlite | awk -F= '{print $1}'));
for c in "${capabilities[@]}"; do rpm -q --whatrequires "$c"; done

This only uses options built-in to rpm itself, and so it doesn't require installing any additional packages (e.g. yum-utils in CentOS 7, which is the package that contains repoquery).