You can use wildcard with rpm search but you have to do 2 things: 1. use "-a" switch (means "all") with query ("-q") switch - argument is a pattern to use while searching for package names of all installed packages 2. protect wildcards, so that shell could not eat them - escape it with backslash ("\") or enclose all pattern between apostrophes ("'"): rpm -qa 'co*de' As you can see above it is possible to insert wildcards into middle of the pattern. If you want, you can add "-i" or another rpm query options, "-i" will print package information for all installed packages matching pattern. Show Sample Output

This example summarize size of all pdf files in /tmp directory and its subdirectories (in bytes). Replace "/tmp" with directory path of your choice and "\*pdf" or even "-iname \*pdf" with your own pattern to match specific type of files. You can replace also parameter for du to count kilo or megabytes, but because of du rounding the sum will not be correct (especially with lot of small files and megabytes counting). In some cases you could probably use sth like this: du -cb `find /tmp -type f -iname \*pdf`|tail -n 1 But be aware that this second command CANNOT count files with spaces in their names and it will cheat you, if there are some files matching the pattern that you don't have rights to read. The first oneliner is resistant to such problems (it will not count sizes of files which you cant read but will give you correct sum of rest of them). Show Sample Output

It displays, last 15 yum operations (in last operation as first row order) with its dates. Change 15 to any number of operations you need to display or remove "| tac" to see it in reverse order (last operation as last row)

Replace 'more' command with any command which is in your PATH. Show Sample Output