Removing RPMs

The rpm -e command removes a package from your system. But before removing a package, RPM checks out a few things. It does a dependency check to make sure no other packages need what you're trying to remove. If it finds dependent packages, rpm -e fails with an error message identifying these packages.

If you have modified most any of the configuration files, RPM makes a copy of the file, adds an .rpmsave extension to the end of the file name, and then erases the original. Finally, after removing all files from your system and the RPM database, it removes the package name from the database.

Be very careful about which packages you remove from your system. Like many other Linux utilities, RPM may silently let you shoot yourself in the foot. For example, if you were to remove the package that include /etc/passwd or the kernel, it would devastate your system.