How to remove 32/64 bit RPM's from your system

Linux and Unix-Like Red Hat
1

Hi,

I have a 64-bit RHEL 5.5. In order to make a particular product work I want to uninstall some rpms which is specific to 64 bit. Wondering if anyone has a way how to remove the 64-bit rpm without disturbing the i386 rpms.

What I find when I googled is all are removing forcefully, but sometimes doing this makes the system very unstable. Wondering if anybody has tried this possibility of just removing a particular rpm without disturbing the other architectures.

Thanks,
Dinesh

2

I suggest you use yum:

$ yum list installed 'znc*'
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, kernel-module, priorities
Reducing CentOS-5 - Plus to included packages only
Finished
Installed Packages
znc.x86_64                            0.098-1.el5                      installed
znc-devel.i386                        0.098-1.el5                      installed
znc-devel.x86_64                      0.098-1.el5                      installed
$ sudo yum remove znc-devel.x86_64
--> Running transaction check
---> Package znc-devel.x86_64 0:0.098-1.el5 set to be erased
--> Finished Dependency Resolution

Dependencies Resolved

================================================================================
 Package           Arch           Version               Repository         Size
================================================================================
Removing:
 znc-devel         x86_64         0.098-1.el5           installed         234 k

Transaction Summary
================================================================================
Remove        1 Package(s)
Reinstall     0 Package(s)
Downgrade     0 Package(s)

Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
Running rpm_check_debug
Running Transaction Test
Finished Transaction Test
Transaction Test Succeeded
Running Transaction
  Erasing        : znc-devel                                                1/1 

Removed:
  znc-devel.x86_64 0:0.098-1.el5                                                

Complete!

$ yum list installed 'znc*'
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror, kernel-module, priorities
Reducing CentOS-5 - Plus to included packages only
Finished
Installed Packages
znc.x86_64                           0.098-1.el5                       installed
znc-devel.i386                       0.098-1.el5                       installed

Just be careful not to remove a bunch of dependencies that other packages may depend on.
Same thing can be done with rpm. In this example

$ sudo rpm -e znc-devel.x86_64
3

Find the rpm list with Arch using the below one.
sudo /bin/rpm -qa --queryformat "%{NAME}-%{VERSION}-%{RELEASE}-%{arch}\n"

And remove the rpm which u need using
sudo /bin/rpm -q pkgname.arch

hope this will help for ur issue.