rpm quick win – what installed specific package

Problem:

There is an package on the OS, but you dont know which package it was installed through.

Example with ping on RHEL-9

First finding here the ping binary is located

which ping
# Output
/usr/bin/ping

Than using rpm -qf

-q = query -f = verify owning installed file

Knowing that, lets get that bad bad programm which installed ping or where it come from/with it:

rpm -qf $(which ping)

iputils-20210202-11.el9.x86_64

Thats often the case, that an programm on the OS which we use is not directly installed via the name we are using it and thats how we can find out where it came from.