reinstall of samba or extracting smb.conf

[Roger Searle]

I'm very confused by the software installation process in linux.  I've 
followed the suggestion to "man rpm" which only managed to add to the 
confusion: which switch to use? Then when I try them, I get conflicting 
output.  Really all I want is an original copy of the smb.conf file so I 
can start again with it but am happy to reinstall samba completely if 
that's easier (or can more quickly get help on the right command).  

So far I've managed to get a copy of samba-common-2.2.7a-7.9.0.i386.rpm 
from the distro disk (rh9) after determining that this is where smb.conf 
is.  

rpm -i [samba-file]
gives me "package is already installed".  That's understandable - my 
attempt to reinstall won't work that way.  So to then try to erase it:

rpm -e [samba-file]
gives me "package is not installed".  I don't get that -  I've just been 
told previously that this package is already installed!

So I'm stuck again.  Would someone be kind enough to spoon feed me the 
commands to either get a copy of smb.conf out of the rpm file, or to 
remove and reinstall samba to do the same thing?  Both would be great, 
so I could understand both processes.

Roger