Note

If you just want to see the yum command for Redhat install uuencode skip to the end.

Background Information

Uuencoding is a form of binary-to-text encoding that originated in the Unix program uuencode, for encoding binary data for transmission over the uucp mail system.

The name “uuencoding” is derived from “Unix-to-Unix encoding”. Since uucp converted characters between various computers’ character sets, uuencode was used to convert the data to fairly common characters that were unlikely to be “translated” and thereby destroy the file. The program uudecode reverses the effect of uuencode, recreating the original binary file exactly. uuencode/decode became popular for sending binary files by e-mail and posting to usenet newsgroups, etc.

It has now been largely replaced by MIME and yEnc. With MIME, files that might have been uuencoded are transferred with base64 encoding.

Finding the Package

Using “yum whatprovides” is a great way to find the package you are looking for instead of trying to track it down via google

Example

In the example below we learn that uuencode is provided by sharutils.

# yum whatprovides "*uuencode"
Loaded plugins: fastestmirror
Loading mirror speeds from cached hostfile
 * base: yum.singlehop.com
 * extras: mirror.wiredtree.com
 * updates: mirror.cs.uwp.edu
sharutils-4.7-6.1.el6.x86_64 : The GNU shar utilities for packaging and unpackaging shell archives
Repo        : base
Matched from:
Filename    : /usr/bin/uuencode

How do we install uuencode?

# yum install sharutils
Loaded plugins: rhnplugin, security
Excluding Packages in global exclude list
Finished
Setting up Install Process
Parsing package install arguments
Resolving Dependencies
--> Running transaction check
---> Package sharutils.x86_64 0:4.6.1-2 set to be updated
--> Finished Dependency Resolution

Dependencies Resolved

==============================================================================================================================    ==========================================
 Package                              Arch                              Version                                   Repository                                           Size
==============================================================================================================================    ==========================================
Installing:
 sharutils                            x86_64                            4.6.1-2                               rhel-x86_64-    server-5.6.z                            203 k

Transaction Summary
==============================================================================================================================    ==========================================
Install      1 Package(s)
Update       0 Package(s)
Remove       0 Package(s)

Total download size: 203 k
Is this ok [y/N]: y
Downloading Packages:
sharutils-4.6.1-2.x86_64.    rpm                                                                                                                     | 203     kB     00:00
Running rpm_check_debug
Running Transaction Test
Finished Transaction Test
Transaction Test Succeeded
Running Transaction
  Installing     : sharutils                                         [1/1]

Installed: sharutils.x86_64 0:4.6.1-2
Complete!
root@server->