Problem

I tried to remove the package apr-1.2.7-11.el5_6.5 from a Linux server and I got the error “error: “apr-1.2.7-11.el5_6.5” specifies multiple packages”

[root@dbappweb ~]# rpm -e apr-1.2.7-11.el5_6.5
error: "apr-1.2.7-11.el5_6.5" specifies multiple packages

Reason

I got the above error because multiple instances of the package apr-1.2.7-11.el5_6.5 were installed on the server. When I inquired about this package I found that the package was installed two times as shown below:

[root@dbappweb ~]# rpm -qa |grep apr
apr-1.2.7-11.el5_6.5
apr-1.2.7-11.el5_6.5

The package apr-1.2.7-11.el5_6.5 was shown two times because 32-bit and 64-bit both versions were installed on the system.

Solution

To remove both the packages we need to run the below commands specifying the package that is 32-bit or 64-bit.

[root@dbappweb ~]# rpm -e apr-1.2.7-11.el5_6.5.i386
[root@dbappweb ~]# rpm -e apr-1.2.7-11.el5_6.5.x86_64

Note: I faced the above problem on RHEL 5.8 while installing the Apache 2.2.3