Check the Version of Package

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Check the Version of an Installed Package/Software

From time to time, you will find yourself needing to know which package you are currently running. You can do this in one of two ways, rpm or yum.

Every time a package is installed, upgraded, or erased, the changes are logged in RPM's database. It's necessary for RPM to keep track of this information; otherwise it wouldn't be able to perform these operations correctly. You can think of the RPM database (and the disk space it consumes) as being the "price of admission" for the easy package management that RPM provides.

Use RPM to check Package Version

Lets say you need to check what version of httpd you are currently running.

Now you can use RPM to figure this information out run the following

rpm -qa | grep httpd

You should get something like

httpd-2.2.15-29.el6.centos.x86_64
httpd-tools-2.2.15-29.el6.centos.x86_64

Now you know you are running version 2.2.15-29.

Use YUM to check Package Version

To accomplish the same objective, you would type

yum info httpd

You should get something like

Installed Packages
Name        : httpd
Arch        : x86_64
Version     : 2.2.15
Release     : 29.el6.centos
Size        : 2.9 M
Repo        : installed
From repo   : updates
Summary     : Apache HTTP Server
URL         : http://httpd.apache.org/
License     : ASL 2.0
Description : The Apache HTTP Server is a powerful, efficient, and extensible web server.

Sometimes, I find that yum does not have all packages and rpm has yet to let me down. But most of the time either method will work.