Pretty off-topic by now, but I'm interested, because this seems like something that could be useful in a variety of situations. (Which is why I answered on the thread, not private message.)

How does this work?

I don't really know the red hat packaging system. I have an ubuntu box, and am beginning to get handy with apt-get (not that handy though). Can I get it to work from there, either by using rpm on ubuntu, or some analogous way with apt-get?

I think a simple copy of a terminal red hat session where you went in and generated an "old source" would be valuable to others.