How to list the contents of a package using YUM?

Question

I know how to use rpm to list the contents of a package (rpm -qpil package.rpm). However, this requires knowing the location of the .rpm file on the filesystem.

Answer 1

There are several good answers here, so let me provide a terrible one:

: you can type in anything below, doesnt have to match anything

yum whatprovides "me with a life"

: result of the above (some liberties taken with spacing):

Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
base | 3.6 kB 00:00 
extras | 3.4 kB 00:00 
updates | 3.4 kB 00:00 
(1/4): extras/7/x86_64/primary_db | 166 kB 00:00 
(2/4): base/7/x86_64/group_gz | 155 kB 00:00 
(3/4): updates/7/x86_64/primary_db | 9.1 MB 00:04 
(4/4): base/7/x86_64/primary_db | 5.3 MB 00:05 
Determining fastest mirrors
 * base: mirrors.xmission.com
 * extras: mirrors.xmission.com
 * updates: mirrors.xmission.com
base/7/x86_64/filelists_db | 6.2 MB 00:02 
extras/7/x86_64/filelists_db | 468 kB 00:00 
updates/7/x86_64/filelists_db | 5.3 MB 00:01 
No matches found

: the key result above is that "primary_db" files were downloaded

: filelists are downloaded EVEN IF you have keepcache=0 in your yum.conf

: note you can limit this to "primary_db.sqlite" if you really want

find /var/cache/yum -name '*.sqlite'

: if you download/install a new repo, run the exact same command again
: to get the databases for the new repo

: if you know sqlite you can stop reading here

: if not heres a sample command to dump the contents

echo 'SELECT packages.name, GROUP_CONCAT(files.name, ", ") AS files FROM files JOIN packages ON (files.pkgKey = packages.pkgKey) GROUP BY packages.name LIMIT 10;' | sqlite3 -line /var/cache/yum/x86_64/7/base/gen/primary_db.sqlite 

: remove "LIMIT 10" above for the whole list

: format chosen for proof-of-concept purposes, probably can be improved a lot