Usually when I install a common package like PostgreSQL or MySQL or Python etc using Yum it installs the files held within those packages into locations specific to CentOS itself. It may also install scripts specific to CentOS only. These paths may not be the same as the defaults found within the source distributions found on the PostgreSQL, MySQL, Python etc project websites and the scripts are usually unique to CentOS. Recently when I installed PostgreSQL under Ubuntu I found some very nice distribution specific information about how the install was organized and how to use the package in a Ubuntu way. I found this information in /usr/share/doc/
Is there any such information included within CentOS?
There are lots of packages on CentOS that put useful information in
/usr/share/doc
.Reading the SPEC file is a useful alternative to find out how a packages was built and how it was installed.
You get the SPEC file by downloading the SRPM and installing it. It'll give you the source tarball and possible distribution specific scripts, too.
Edit: removed the line about README.{RedHat,Fedora} files being abundant, since I can only find one of each on my RHEL6 box and none on a RHEL5 box. Must have dreamed it :P