CentOS - Jun 2008 - rpm -q versus what's installed

I am trying to install Oracle client 10g (10.2.0) on a 64-bit CentOS 5.0 
system.

'rpm -q make gcc glibc etc' reveals some packages as "not
installed", yet
a yum install <package name> consistently returns Nothing to do. Yum list 
available <package name> yields nothing needed.

If rpm -q <list of packages> lists some that are "not installed"
but every
variant of yum install and yum list I've tried and googled claiims nothing 
more needs to be installed, either the OS is misreporting (I doubt that) 
or I'm missing something that is not easily being revealed, or that I 
haven't used in a long time and outright forgetting.

I still need (per rpm -q):

compat-gcc
compat-gcc-c++
compat-libstsdc++-devel
openmotif21
gnome-libs


There has been a suggestion of the version of Oracle (32 or 64 bit) I'm 
trying to install, but after thinking about it, I believe this question is 
a more fundamental operating system issue.

Thanks for any insight.

Scott

On Wed, 2008-06-04 at 23:27 -0400, Scott R. Ehrlich
wrote:
> I am trying to install Oracle client 10g (10.2.0) on a 64-bit CentOS 5.0 
> system.
> 
> 'rpm -q make gcc glibc etc' reveals some packages as "not
installed", yet
> a yum install <package name> consistently returns Nothing to do. Yum
list
> available <package name> yields nothing needed.
> 
> If rpm -q <list of packages> lists some that are "not
installed" but every
> variant of yum install and yum list I've tried and googled claiims
nothing
> more needs to be installed, either the OS is misreporting (I doubt that) 
Good, 'cause the OS has nothing to do with it!  ;-)   It's all the rpm
package and what sits on top of that, yum.
> or I'm missing something that is not easily being revealed, or that I 
> haven't used in a long time and outright forgetting.
A common error is to not give the correct name to rpm. Try

   rpm -qa | grep <part of the pkg name>

I often forget to add such trivial stuff as ".i386" to the package
name.

Ditto for yum. Just do a yum list all into some file and then view the
file.

Also, yum list all into a file might be useful. It shows installed and
available.
> <snip>
HTH
-- 
Bill