I have run across a situation in which one (or more) of the icons in the 
gnome-icon-theme RPM have been damaged (presuming this is the RPM that 
contains the various icons used by Gnome utilities, such as the Gnome 
power manager that displays battery and mains status for a laptop). 
According to numerous comments on this list, it is much better to use 
yum (e.g., yum install) rather than a direct rpm command.  I have found 
the following information on having yum reinstall an installed rpm file 
from URL http://serverlinux.blogspot.com/2009/11/yum-force-reinstall.html

Are the recommended methods safe?  Would it be better to simply download 
the rpm file, and then use a rpm force to force re-installation of an 
already installed rpm file?

Any advice, particularly based upon direct practical experience with EL 
6, would be most appreciated.

Yasha Karant

Yum Force Reinstall
Since Yum does not have a force flag, rpm commands must be used along 
with Yum to do some heavy lifting. Here are a few ways to force the 
reinstall of a broken package on a Yum Managed system.

Yum Remove and then Install
The easiest solution is to yum remove the package and then yum install 
the same package. If there are too many dependencies at stake with the 
package in question, try another method.
yum remove PACKAGE
yum install PACKAGE

Force Erase and then Yum Install
RPM dependencies sometimes make a simple yum remove impossible and Yum 
will want to erase your entire OS before moving on. In this case, use 
rpm to force erase, then yum to install.

Keep reading here

rpm -e --nodeps PACKAGE
yum install PACKAGE

Prune RPM Database and then Yum Install
If your package install is so corrupted that an rpm -e is dangerous or 
impossible, even with --nodeps, remove the package from the local RPM 
database to trick yum into reinstalling the package. No files are 
deleted when using rpm -e with --justdb.
rpm -e --justdb --nodeps PACKAGE
yum install PACKAGE