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clarifies existing RPM support #1593

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c569fa0
clarifies existing RPM support
saramaebee Sep 30, 2025
1aec3d3
Update docs/references/strategies/system/rpm/rpm-container.md
saramaebee Sep 30, 2025
df2de59
Update docs/references/strategies/system/rpm/rpm-container.md
saramaebee Sep 30, 2025
afc7e60
Merge branch 'master' into sara-rhel-ol-docs-clarification
spatten Oct 14, 2025
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16 changes: 16 additions & 0 deletions docs/references/strategies/system/rpm/rpm-container.md
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Expand Up @@ -4,6 +4,22 @@ The RedHat Package Manager (rpm).

> This analysis is only executed when container scanning.

## Important Limitations

**License Identification**: RPM package detection is supported, but license information extraction has limitations:

- **Full Support**: Alpine (APK) and Debian (DPKG) packages include complete license information.
- **Limited Support**: RHEL and Oracle Linux (OL) RPM packages are detected but may appear as "unlicensed" because:
- License information is not currently extracted from RPM package databases
- Oracle Linux EPEL repositories are not automatically recognized
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Oracle Linux should be supported. I don't see any open issues for Oracle and do see a number of closed ones delivering support.

- Modern RHEL9/OL9 signature formats may cause fetcher issues

**Impact**: Customers scanning RHEL/OL-based containers may see hundreds of system packages (like `perl`, `bash`, `coreutils`) marked as "unlicensed" even though license metadata exists in the RPM database.

**Workaround**: Packages can be manually licensed through the FOSSA web interface, but this creates significant overhead for continuous scanning workflows.

**Future Enhancement**: Full RHEL/OL support is on our roadmap. If this is important to you, please reach out to support@fossa.com.

## Discovery

Each RPM installation may use one of several backends:
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2 changes: 1 addition & 1 deletion docs/references/subcommands/container/scanner.md
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Expand Up @@ -225,7 +225,7 @@ The following package managers are supported in container scanning:
| ------------------------------------ | ------------------ | ---------------------------------------------------------------- |
| Alpine (APK) | :white_check_mark: | [APK Docs](./../../strategies/system/apk/apk.md) |
| Debian (DPKG) | :white_check_mark: | [DPKG Docs](./../../strategies/system/dpkg/dpkg.md) |
| RedHat (RPM) | :white_check_mark: | [RPM Docs](../../strategies/system/rpm/rpm-container.md) |
| RedHat (RPM) | :warning: | [RPM Docs](../../strategies/system/rpm/rpm-container.md) |
| Python (setuptools, poetry, etc.) | :white_check_mark: | [Python Docs](./../../strategies/languages/python/python.md) |
| Javascript (npm, yarn, pnpm, etc.) | :white_check_mark: | [Javascript Docs](./../../strategies/languages/nodejs/nodejs.md) |
| Ruby (bundler) | :white_check_mark: | [Ruby](./../../strategies/languages/ruby/ruby.md) |
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