Installing Alien on CentOS 7: Convert .deb to .rpm

alien is a straightforward package converter available in EPEL that handles conversion between .deb, .rpm, Slackware, and other package formats. This is useful when you need to install Debian packages on RPM-based systems.

Prerequisites

You need EPEL (Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux) enabled. On CentOS 7, 8, or Rocky Linux 8+:

sudo dnf install epel-release

Or if you’re on an older CentOS/RHEL system without dnf:

sudo yum install epel-release

Installation

Install alien from EPEL:

sudo dnf install alien

Verify the installation:

alien --version

You should see output like:

alien version 8.95 or newer

Basic Usage

Converting a .deb to .rpm

Convert a Debian package to RPM format:

sudo alien -r package.deb

The -r flag tells alien to output an RPM file. This generates a .rpm file in your current directory that you can then install with dnf or rpm -i.

Converting with version adjustments

By default, alien may adjust the package version to be RPM-compliant. To maintain the original version number:

sudo alien -r --keep-version package.deb

Installing after conversion

After conversion, install the resulting RPM:

sudo dnf install ./package.rpm

Converting to other formats

Convert .deb to Slackware .tgz:

alien -t package.deb

Convert .rpm to .deb (less common but supported):

alien -d package.rpm

Important Considerations

Dependencies: alien converts the package structure but doesn’t resolve all dependencies. If the converted package depends on libraries not available in your RPM repositories, you’ll need to install those separately.

Testing: Always test converted packages in a non-production environment first. The conversion process can sometimes introduce issues, particularly with:

Systemd service files
Configuration file locations
Library paths

Architecture mismatch: Ensure the .deb package matches your system architecture (x86_64, aarch64, etc.). Convert only packages meant for your platform.

Better alternatives: Before converting, check if the software is available directly in RPM format from the vendor or from community repositories like COPR. Native RPM packages are always preferable to converted packages.

Example: Converting a specific package

If you have example-1.0.deb and need it as an RPM:

sudo alien -r example-1.0.deb
# Creates: example-1.0-2.x86_64.rpm

sudo dnf install example-1.0-2.x86_64.rpm

Troubleshooting

If alien is not found after installation, verify EPEL is properly enabled:

dnf repolist | grep epel

If EPEL doesn’t appear in the list, re-run the EPEL installation and clear your package cache:

sudo dnf clean all
sudo dnf install epel-release

For detailed help with conversion options:

alien --help