passing installation parameters to rpm?

[Cris Merritt <cris crismerritt com>]

Dear RPMers, a question:

How can I pass installation parameters to an RPM package installation?

To be more specific, I would like to manage large numbers of Linux 
installations with RPM. Not only must I manage which packages are 
installed on each machine, I must also manage how each installed package 
is configured. I want to manage all this information in a database and 
automate the installation/configuration.

For example, say I have an application Foo packaged in foo.rpm, and say 
Foo has a config file /etc/foo.conf, where the parameter FOOHOST gets 
specified.

Now, I want to store the correct value of FOOHOST for each system in a 
database and use this to automate the configuration. I can have the 
package automatically build (or modify) /etc/foo.conf, but how do I get 
the value of FOOHOST into the installation process? I'd like my 
management system to pass this value to the rpm --install command 
through some channel. This channel could be a file specified on the 
command line, or environment variables, or definitions on the command 
line, or...

What is the canonical way to do this?

Thanks.

Regards,

Cris

cris@crismerritt.com