[clug] Determining installed RPM subarchitecture

[Andrew Pollock]

Hi,

Continuing on my quest to be able to update a Red Hat system sans the RHN,
I am writing a script that compares the versions of the contents of the
updates directory of a Red Hat 7.3 mirror against the versions of the 
installed packages.

The only stumbing block I have come across so far is subarchitectures.

i.e. on said box I have

glibc-2.2.5-34 installed

On the Red Hat 7.3 mirror, there are:

updates/7.3/en/os/i386/glibc-2.2.5-43.i386.rpm
and
updates/7.3/en/os/i686/glibc-2.2.5-43.i686.rpm

So my script can determine that I have a version mismatch and therefore
require an update, however, I can't seem to determine whether I have the
i386 or the i686 version installed, and therefore, which subarchitecture I
need to grab.

Anyone with more RPM internals knowledge than me able to offer any 
suggestions? www.rpm.org is crap.

Andrew