LinuxHostingSupport

You may receive an error message “error: packagename specifies multiple packages” while removing a package with “rpm -e package-name”, for example:

# rpm -e mysql-devel
error: "mysql-devel" specifies multiple packages

This is because the packages of both the architectures (32 and 64 bit) are installed  on the server i.e.

mysql-devel.i386
mysql-devel.x86_64

CentOS, Fedora will list the duplicate packages when you query them using RPM. It won’t list the architecture i.e.

# rpm -qa mysql-devel
mysql-devel
mysql-devel

To list the packages along with their architecture, use the –queryformat option while querying the package,

# rpm -q --queryformat "%{name}.%{arch}\n" mysql-devel
mysql-devel.i386
mysql-devel.x86_64

Now, remove the package you wish to, for example 32 bit package:

# rpm -e mysql-devel.i386