HOWTO: Extracting postinstall Scripts from a RPM
RPM packagers will often create shell scripts that help with the setup of the software that is going to be installed. If you want to look at what these scripts are going to do to your system run this command:
rpm -qp --scripts some-package.rpm > rpmscript.sh
Also handy in this context is seeing what files are in the package and where they will be installed.
rpm -qlp some-package.rpm