After having used Ubuntu and Debian for a real long time, and almost entirely through the command line, I thought I would post a quick reference of sorts for all package management related tools in one place .
I would definitely like to have community support for improving this, and am sure it will be helpful for all terminal junkies.
1. Listing of repositories
– Found at /etc/apt/sources.list
– Lines starting with # indicates comment
– Lines starting with deb indicate pre-packaged binaries
– Lines starting with deb-src indicate source. Can be commented for most users
2. Package management tools
– aptitude
– dpkg
– apt-cache
3. Updating index of repositories
sudo aptitude update
4. Searching for a package from the repos
aptitude search package-name
apt-cache search package-name
apt-cache search –names-only package-name
5. Listing all installed packages
dpkg –list | grep ^ii
You can further pipe it using grep to search for a installed package that matches some name
dpkg –list | grep ^ii | grep package_name
6. Install a .deb file you downloaded from the internet
sudo dpkg –install path_to_file_name
This is not always advised. First check with the package documentation if you have required dependancies, and it is always better to install from the repositories.
7. Install a package repo
If you know the package name, or if you know the package exists after a search as per 4 above,
sudo aptitude install package-name
This will pull all dependencies
8. Uninstalling a package
sudo aptitude purge package-name
aptitude remove package-name
The first one deletes everything including configuration files. The second one retains the configuration files.
9. Listing all files that a certain package installed in your system
dpkg –listfiles package-name
10. Finding out which package installed a file
If you know a file, and want to know which package installed it
dpkg –search filename
For example dpkg –search /etc/apache2/apache2.conf reveals apache2-common
11. Upgrading your system
sudo aptitude upgrade
This upgrades all packages installed using aptitude/apt-get or dpkg. Substitute upgrade with dist-upgrade for a more complete upgrade (can someone help me out here?)
12. Finding out which repo a package came from
apt-cache policy package_name
13. Changing configuration of a package
sudo dpkg-reconfigure package-name
14. Clear the cache of downloaded packages
sudo aptitude clean
sudo aptitude autoclean
15. Show informatoin about a package
aptitude show package-name
apt-cache show package-name
dpkg –info package-name.deb
The last one is for showing details of a package you downloaded online.
Other miscellaneous details
1. apt-get settings in /etc/apt. Change if you know what you are doing
You could
— Determine before hand how much configuration a package should undergo
— modify the gpg data of repositories
— Pin packages, that determine wheter or not you don’t want a package upgraded
2. Downloaded .deb files are stored in /var/cache/apt/archives
Delete them using 14
If required, admins please move this to another section as you see fit.
Edit #1: Thanks to Aysiu for pointing out requirement of root permisions.