NAME¶
dpkg - package manager for Debian
SYNOPSIS¶
dpkg [
option...]
action
WARNING¶
This manual is intended for users wishing to understand
dpkg's command
line options and package states in more detail than that provided by
dpkg
--help.
It should
not be used by package maintainers wishing to understand how
dpkg will install their packages. The descriptions of what
dpkg
does when installing and removing packages are particularly inadequate.
DESCRIPTION¶
dpkg is a tool to install, build, remove and manage Debian packages. The
primary and more user-friendly front-end for
dpkg is
aptitude(1).
dpkg itself is controlled entirely via command line
parameters, which consist of exactly one action and zero or more options. The
action-parameter tells
dpkg what to do and options control the behavior
of the action in some way.
dpkg can also be used as a front-end to
dpkg-deb(1) and
dpkg-query(1). The list of supported actions can be found later on in
the
ACTIONS section. If any such action is encountered
dpkg just
runs
dpkg-deb or
dpkg-query with the parameters given to it, but
no specific options are currently passed to them, to use any such option the
back-ends need to be called directly.
dpkg maintains some usable information about available packages. The
information is divided in three classes:
states,
selection
states and
flags. These values are intended to be changed mainly
with
dselect.
Package states¶
- not-installed
- The package is not installed on your system.
- config-files
- Only the configuration files of the package exist on the system.
- half-installed
- The installation of the package has been started, but not completed for
some reason.
- unpacked
- The package is unpacked, but not configured.
- half-configured
- The package is unpacked and configuration has been started, but not yet
completed for some reason.
- triggers-awaited
- The package awaits trigger processing by another package.
- triggers-pending
- The package has been triggered.
- installed
- The package is correctly unpacked and configured.
Package selection states¶
- install
- The package is selected for installation.
- hold
- A package marked to be on hold is not handled by dpkg,
unless forced to do that with option --force-hold.
- deinstall
- The package is selected for deinstallation (i.e. we want to remove all
files, except configuration files).
- purge
- The package is selected to be purged (i.e. we want to remove everything
from system directories, even configuration files).
Package flags¶
- reinst-required
- A package marked reinst-required is broken and requires
reinstallation. These packages cannot be removed, unless forced with
option --force-remove-reinstreq.
ACTIONS¶
- -i, --install package-file...
- Install the package. If --recursive or -R option is
specified, package-file must refer to a directory instead.
Installation consists of the following steps:
1. Extract the control files of the new package.
2. If another version of the same package was installed before the
new installation, execute prerm script of the old package.
3. Run preinst script, if provided by the package.
4. Unpack the new files, and at the same time back up the old files,
so that if something goes wrong, they can be restored.
5. If another version of the same package was installed before the
new installation, execute the postrm script of the old package.
Note that this script is executed after the preinst script of the
new package, because new files are written at the same time old files are
removed.
6. Configure the package. See --configure for detailed
information about how this is done.
- --unpack package-file...
- Unpack the package, but don't configure it. If --recursive or
-R option is specified, package-file must refer to a
directory instead.
- --configure package...|-a|--pending
- Configure a package which has been unpacked but not yet configured. If
-a or --pending is given instead of package, all
unpacked but unconfigured packages are configured.
To reconfigure a package which has already been configured, try the
dpkg-reconfigure(8) command instead.
Configuring consists of the following steps:
1. Unpack the conffiles, and at the same time back up the old
conffiles, so that they can be restored if something goes wrong.
2. Run postinst script, if provided by the package.
- --triggers-only package...|-a|--pending
- Processes only triggers. All pending triggers will be processed. If
package names are supplied only those packages' triggers will be
processed, exactly once each where necessary. Use of this option may leave
packages in the improper triggers-awaited and
triggers-pending states. This can be fixed later by running:
dpkg --configure --pending.
- -r, --remove
package...|-a|
--pending
- Remove an installed package. This removes everything except conffiles,
which may avoid having to reconfigure the package if it is reinstalled
later (conffiles are configuration files that are listed in the
DEBIAN/conffiles control file). If -a or --pending is
given instead of a package name, then all packages unpacked, but marked to
be removed in file /var/lib/dpkg/status, are removed.
Removing of a package consists of the following steps:
1. Run prerm script
2. Remove the installed files
3. Run postrm script
- -P, --purge
package...|-a|--pending
- Purge an installed or already removed package. This removes everything,
including conffiles. If -a or --pending is given instead of
a package name, then all packages unpacked or removed, but marked to be
purged in file /var/lib/dpkg/status, are purged.
Note: some configuration files might be unknown to dpkg because they
are created and handled separately through the configuration scripts. In
that case, dpkg won't remove them by itself, but the package's
postrm script (which is called by dpkg), has to take care of
their removal during purge. Of course, this only applies to files in
system directories, not configuration files written to individual users'
home directories.
Purging of a package consists of the following steps:
1. Remove the package, if not already removed. See --remove
for detailed information about how this is done.
2. Run postrm script.
- -V, --verify [package-name...]
- Verifies the integrity of package-name or all packages if omitted,
by comparing information from the files installed by a package with the
files metadata information stored in the dpkg database. The origin
of the files metadata information in the database is the binary packages
themselves. That metadata gets collected at package unpack time during the
installation process.
Currently the only functional check performed is an md5sum verification
against the stored value in the files database. It will only get checked
if the database contains the file md5sum. To check for any missing
metadata in the database, the --audit command can be used.
The output format is selectable with the --verify-format option,
which by default uses the rpm format, but that might change in the
future, and as such, programs parsing this command output should be
explicit about the format they expect.
- --update-avail, --merge-avail [Packages-file]
- Update dpkg's and dselect's idea of which packages are
available. With action --merge-avail, old information is combined
with information from Packages-file. With action
--update-avail, old information is replaced with the information in
the Packages-file. The Packages-file distributed with Debian
is simply named Packages. If the Packages-file argument is
missing or named - then it will be read from standard input (since
dpkg 1.17.7). dpkg keeps its record of available packages in
/var/lib/dpkg/available.
A simpler one-shot command to retrieve and update the available file
is dselect update. Note that this file is mostly useless if you
don't use dselect but an APT-based frontend: APT has its own system
to keep track of available packages.
- -A, --record-avail package-file...
- Update dpkg and dselect's idea of which packages are
available with information from the package package-file. If
--recursive or -R option is specified, package-file
must refer to a directory instead.
- --forget-old-unavail
- Now obsolete and a no-op as dpkg will automatically forget
uninstalled unavailable packages.
- --clear-avail
- Erase the existing information about what packages are available.
- -C, --audit [package-name...]
- Performs database sanity and consistency checks for package-name or
all packages if omitted. For example, searches for packages that have been
installed only partially on your system or that have missing, wrong or
obsolete control data or files. dpkg will suggest what to do with
them to get them fixed.
- --get-selections [package-name-pattern...]
- Get list of package selections, and write it to stdout. Without a pattern,
non-installed packages (i.e. those which have been previously purged) will
not be shown.
- --set-selections
- Set package selections using file read from stdin. This file should be in
the format ' package state', where state is one of
install, hold, deinstall or purge. Blank lines
and comment lines beginning with '#' are also permitted.
The available file needs to be up-to-date for this command to be
useful, otherwise unknown packages will be ignored with a warning. See the
--update-avail and --merge-avail commands for more
information.
- --clear-selections
- Set the requested state of every non-essential package to deinstall. This
is intended to be used immediately before --set-selections, to
deinstall any packages not in list given to --set-selections.
- --yet-to-unpack
- Searches for packages selected for installation, but which for some reason
still haven't been installed.
- --add-architecture architecture
- Add architecture to the list of architectures for which packages
can be installed without using --force-architecture. The
architecture dpkg is built for (i.e. the output of
--print-architecture) is always part of that list.
- --remove-architecture architecture
- Remove architecture from the list of architectures for which
packages can be installed without using --force-architecture. If
the architecture is currently in use in the database then the operation
will be refused, except if --force-architecture is specified. The
architecture dpkg is built for (i.e. the output of
--print-architecture) can never be removed from that list.
- --print-architecture
- Print architecture of packages dpkg installs (for example,
"i386").
- --print-foreign-architectures
- Print a newline-separated list of the extra architectures dpkg is
configured to allow packages to be installed for.
- --compare-versions ver1 op ver2
- Compare version numbers, where op is a binary operator. dpkg
returns success (zero result) if the specified condition is satisfied, and
failure (nonzero result) otherwise. There are two groups of operators,
which differ in how they treat an empty ver1 or ver2. These
treat an empty version as earlier than any version: lt le eq ne ge
gt. These treat an empty version as later than any version: lt-nl
le-nl ge-nl gt-nl. These are provided only for compatibility with
control file syntax: < << <= = >= >>
>.
- -?, --help
- Display a brief help message.
- --force-help
- Give help about the --force-thing options.
- -Dh, --debug=help
- Give help about debugging options.
- --version
- Display dpkg version information.
- dpkg-deb actions
- See dpkg-deb(1) for more information about the following actions.
-b, --build directory [archive|directory]
Build a deb package.
-c, --contents archive
List contents of a deb package.
-e, --control filename [directory]
Extract control-information from a package.
-x, --extract archive directory
Extract the files contained by package.
-X, --vextract archive directory
Extract and display the filenames contained by a
package.
-f, --field archive [control-field...]
Display control field(s) of a package.
--fsys-tarfile archive
Display the filesystem tar-file contained by a
Debian package.
-I, --info archive [control-file...]
Show information about a package.
- dpkg-query actions
- See dpkg-query(1) for more information about the following actions.
-l, --list package-name-pattern...
List packages matching given pattern.
-s, --status package-name...
Report status of specified package.
-L, --listfiles package-name...
List files installed to your system from package-name.
-S, --search filename-search-pattern...
Search for a filename from installed packages.
-p, --print-avail package-name...
Display details about package-name, as found in
/var/lib/dpkg/available. Users of APT-based frontends
should use apt-cache show package-name instead.
OPTIONS¶
All options can be specified both on the command line and in the
dpkg
configuration file
/etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg or fragment files (with names
matching this shell pattern '[0-9a-zA-Z_-]*') on the configuration directory
/etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg.d/. Each line in the configuration file is either an
option (exactly the same as the command line option but without leading
hyphens) or a comment (if it starts with a
#).
- --abort-after=number
- Change after how many errors dpkg will abort. The default is
50.
- -B, --auto-deconfigure
- When a package is removed, there is a possibility that another installed
package depended on the removed package. Specifying this option will cause
automatic deconfiguration of the package which depended on the removed
package.
- -Doctal,
--debug=octal
- Switch debugging on. octal is formed by bitwise-orring desired
values together from the list below (note that these values may change in
future releases). -Dh or --debug=help display these
debugging values.
Number Description
1 Generally helpful progress information
2 Invocation and status of maintainer scripts
10 Output for each file processed
100 Lots of output for each file processed
20 Output for each configuration file
200 Lots of output for each configuration file
40 Dependencies and conflicts
400 Lots of dependencies/conflicts output
10000 Trigger activation and processing
20000 Lots of output regarding triggers
40000 Silly amounts of output regarding triggers
1000 Lots of drivel about e.g. the dpkg/info dir
2000 Insane amounts of drivel
- --force-things, --no-force-things,
--refuse- things
-
Force or refuse ( no-force and refuse mean the same thing) to
do some things. things is a comma separated list of things
specified below. --force-help displays a message describing them.
Things marked with (*) are forced by default.
Warning: These options are mostly intended to be used by experts
only. Using them without fully understanding their effects may
break your whole system.
all: Turns on (or off) all force options.
downgrade(*): Install a package, even if newer version of it is
already installed.
Warning: At present dpkg does not do any dependency
checking on downgrades and therefore will not warn you if the
downgrade breaks the dependency of some other package. This can
have serious side effects, downgrading essential system components
can even make your whole system unusable. Use with care.
configure-any: Configure also any unpacked but unconfigured packages
on which the current package depends.
hold: Process packages even when marked "hold".
remove-reinstreq: Remove a package, even if it's broken and marked
to require reinstallation. This may, for example, cause parts of the
package to remain on the system, which will then be forgotten by
dpkg.
remove-essential: Remove, even if the package is considered
essential. Essential packages contain mostly very basic Unix commands.
Removing them might cause the whole system to stop working, so use with
caution.
depends: Turn all dependency problems into warnings.
depends-version: Don't care about versions when checking
dependencies.
breaks: Install, even if this would break another package.
conflicts: Install, even if it conflicts with another package. This
is dangerous, for it will usually cause overwriting of some files.
confmiss: If a conffile is missing and the version in the package
did change, always install the missing conffile without prompting. This is
dangerous, since it means not preserving a change (removing) made to the
file.
confnew: If a conffile has been modified and the version in the
package did change, always install the new version without prompting,
unless the --force-confdef is also specified, in which case the
default action is preferred.
confold: If a conffile has been modified and the version in the
package did change, always keep the old version without prompting, unless
the --force-confdef is also specified, in which case the default
action is preferred.
confdef: If a conffile has been modified and the version in the
package did change, always choose the default action without prompting. If
there is no default action it will stop to ask the user unless
--force-confnew or --force-confold is also been given, in
which case it will use that to decide the final action.
confask: If a conffile has been modified always offer to replace it
with the version in the package, even if the version in the package did
not change. If any of --force-confmiss, --force-confnew,
--force-confold, or --force-confdef is also given, it will
be used to decide the final action.
overwrite: Overwrite one package's file with another's file.
overwrite-dir Overwrite one package's directory with another's file.
overwrite-diverted: Overwrite a diverted file with an undiverted
version.
unsafe-io: Do not perform safe I/O operations when unpacking.
Currently this implies not performing file system syncs before file
renames, which is known to cause substantial performance degradation on
some file systems, unfortunately the ones that require the safe I/O on the
first place due to their unreliable behaviour causing zero-length files on
abrupt system crashes.
Note: For ext4, the main offender, consider using instead the mount
option nodelalloc, which will fix both the performance degradation
and the data safety issues, the latter by making the file system not
produce zero-length files on abrupt system crashes with any software not
doing syncs before atomic renames.
Warning: Using this option might improve performance at the cost of
losing data, use with care.
architecture: Process even packages with wrong or no architecture.
bad-version: Process even packages with wrong versions.
bad-path: PATH is missing important programs, so problems are
likely.
not-root: Try to (de)install things even when not root.
bad-verify: Install a package even if it fails authenticity check.
- --ignore-depends=package,...
- Ignore dependency-checking for specified packages (actually, checking is
performed, but only warnings about conflicts are given, nothing
else).
- --no-act, --dry-run, --simulate
- Do everything which is supposed to be done, but don't write any changes.
This is used to see what would happen with the specified action, without
actually modifying anything.
Be sure to give --no-act before the action-parameter, or you might
end up with undesirable results. (e.g. dpkg --purge foo
--no-act will first purge package foo and then try to purge package
--no-act, even though you probably expected it to actually do
nothing)
- -R, --recursive
- Recursively handle all regular files matching pattern *.deb found
at specified directories and all of its subdirectories. This can be used
with -i, -A, --install, --unpack and
--avail actions.
- -G
- Don't install a package if a newer version of the same package is already
installed. This is an alias of --refuse-downgrade.
- --admindir=dir
- Change default administrative directory, which contains many files that
give information about status of installed or uninstalled packages, etc.
(Defaults to /var/lib/dpkg)
- --instdir=dir
- Change default installation directory which refers to the directory where
packages are to be installed. instdir is also the directory passed
to chroot(2) before running package's installation scripts, which
means that the scripts see instdir as a root directory. (Defaults
to /)
- --root=dir
- Changing root changes instdir to dir and
admindir to dir/var/lib/dpkg.
- -O, --selected-only
- Only process the packages that are selected for installation. The actual
marking is done with dselect or by dpkg, when it handles
packages. For example, when a package is removed, it will be marked
selected for deinstallation.
- -E, --skip-same-version
- Don't install the package if the same version of the package is already
installed.
- --pre-invoke=command
- --post-invoke=command Set an invoke hook command to
be run via “sh -c” before or after the dpkg run for
the unpack, configure, install, triggers-only,
remove, purge, add-architecture and
remove-architecture dpkg actions. This option can be
specified multiple times. The order the options are specified is
preserved, with the ones from the configuration files taking precedence.
The environment variable DPKG_HOOK_ACTION is set for the hooks to
the current dpkg action. Note: front-ends might call dpkg
several times per invocation, which might run the hooks more times than
expected.
- --path-exclude=glob-pattern
- --path-include=glob-pattern Set glob-pattern as a
path filter, either by excluding or re-including previously excluded paths
matching the specified patterns during install.
Warning: take into account that depending on the excluded paths you
might completely break your system, use with caution.
The glob patterns use the same wildcards used in the shell, were '*' matches
any sequence of characters, including the empty string and also '/'. For
example, '/usr/*/READ*' matches
'/usr/share/doc/package/README'. As usual, '?' matches any single
character (again, including '/'). And '[' starts a character class, which
can contain a list of characters, ranges and complementations. See
glob(7) for detailed information about globbing. Note: the current
implementation might re-include more directories and symlinks than needed,
to be on the safe side and avoid possible unpack failures, future work
might fix this.
This can be used to remove all paths except some particular ones; a typical
case is:
--path-exclude=/usr/share/doc/*
--path-include=/usr/share/doc/*/copyright
to remove all documentation files except the copyright files.
These two options can be specified multiple times, and interleaved with each
other. Both are processed in the given order, with the last rule that
matches a file name making the decision.
- --verify-format format-name
- Sets the output format for the --verify command.
The only currently supported output format is rpm, which consists of
a line for every path that failed any check. The lines start with 9
characters to report each specific check result, a ' ?' implies the
check could not be done (lack of support, file permissions, etc), '
.' implies the check passed, and an alphanumeric character implies
a specific check failed; the md5sum verification is denoted with a '
5' on the third character. The line is followed by a space and an
attribute character (currently ' c' for conffiles), another space
and the pathname.
- --status-fd n
- Send machine-readable package status and progress information to file
descriptor n. This option can be specified multiple times. The
information is generally one record per line, in one of the following
forms:
- status: package: status
- Package status changed; status is as in the status file.
- status: package : error :
extended-error-message
- An error occurred. Any possible newlines in extended-error-message
will be converted to spaces before output.
- status: file : conffile-prompt : 'real-old'
'real-new' useredited distedited
- User is being asked a conffile question.
- processing: stage: package
- Sent just before a processing stage starts. stage is one of
upgrade, install (both sent before unpacking),
configure, trigproc, disappear, remove,
purge.
- --status-logger=command
- Send machine-readable package status and progress information to the shell
command's standard input. This option can be specified multiple
times. The output format used is the same as in --status-fd.
- --log=filename
- Log status change updates and actions to filename, instead of the
default /var/log/dpkg.log. If this option is given multiple times,
the last filename is used. Log messages are of the form `YYYY-MM-DD
HH:MM:SS status state pkg installed-version' for
status change updates; `YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS action pkg
installed-version available-version' for actions where
action is one of install, upgrade, remove,
purge; and `YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS conffile filename
decision' for conffile changes where decision is either
install or keep.
- --no-debsig
- Do not try to verify package signatures.
- --no-triggers
- Do not run any triggers in this run (activations will still be recorded).
If used with --configure package or --triggers-only
package then the named package postinst will still be run even if
only a triggers run is needed. Use of this option may leave packages in
the improper triggers-awaited and triggers-pending states.
This can be fixed later by running: dpkg --configure
--pending.
- --triggers
- Cancels a previous --no-triggers.
ENVIRONMENT¶
- HOME
- If set, dpkg will use it as the directory from which to read the
user specific configuration file.
- TMPDIR
- If set, dpkg will use it as the directory in which to create
temporary files and directories.
- PAGER
- The program dpkg will execute when displaying the conffiles.
- SHELL
- The program dpkg will execute when starting a new shell.
- COLUMNS
- Sets the number of columns dpkg should use when displaying
formatted text. Currently only used by -l.
- DPKG_SHELL_REASON
- Defined by dpkg on the shell spawned on the conffile prompt to
examine the situation. Current valid value: conffile-prompt.
- DPKG_CONFFILE_OLD
- Defined by dpkg on the shell spawned on the conffile prompt to
examine the situation. Contains the path to the old conffile.
- DPKG_CONFFILE_NEW
- Defined by dpkg on the shell spawned on the conffile prompt to
examine the situation. Contains the path to the new conffile.
- DPKG_RUNNING_VERSION
- Defined by dpkg on the maintainer script environment to the version
of the currently running dpkg instance.
- DPKG_MAINTSCRIPT_PACKAGE
- Defined by dpkg on the maintainer script environment to the
(non-arch-qualified) package name being handled.
- DPKG_MAINTSCRIPT_PACKAGE_REFCOUNT
- Defined by dpkg on the maintainer script environment to the package
reference count, i.e. the number of package instances with a state greater
than not-installed. Since dpkg 1.17.2.
- DPKG_MAINTSCRIPT_ARCH
- Defined by dpkg on the maintainer script environment to the
architecture the package got built for.
- DPKG_MAINTSCRIPT_NAME
- Defined by dpkg on the maintainer script environment to the name of
the script running (preinst, postinst, prerm, postrm).
FILES¶
- /etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg.d/[0-9a-zA-Z_-]*
- Configuration fragment files.
- /etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg
- Configuration file with default options.
- /var/log/dpkg.log
- Default log file (see /etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg(5) and option
--log).
The other files listed below are in their default directories, see option
--admindir to see how to change locations of these files.
- /var/lib/dpkg/available
- List of available packages.
- /var/lib/dpkg/status
- Statuses of available packages. This file contains information about
whether a package is marked for removing or not, whether it is installed
or not, etc. See section INFORMATION ABOUT PACKAGES for more info.
The status file is backed up daily in /var/backups. It can be useful
if it's lost or corrupted due to filesystems troubles.
The following files are components of a binary package. See
deb(5) for
more information about them:
control
conffiles
preinst
postinst
prerm
postrm
triggers
BUGS¶
--no-act usually gives less information than might be helpful.
EXAMPLES¶
To list installed packages related to the editor
vi(1) (note that
dpkg-query does not load the
available file anymore by default,
and the
dpkg-query --load-avail option should be used instead
for that):
dpkg -l '*vi*'
To see the entries in
/var/lib/dpkg/available of two packages:
dpkg --print-avail elvis vim | less
To search the listing of packages yourself:
less /var/lib/dpkg/available
To remove an installed elvis package:
dpkg -r elvis
To install a package, you first need to find it in an archive or CDROM. The
available file shows that the vim package is in section
"editors":
cd /media/cdrom/pool/main/v/vim dpkg -i vim_4.5-3.deb
To make a local copy of the package selection states:
dpkg --get-selections >myselections
You might transfer this file to another computer, and after having updated the
available file there with your package manager frontend of choice (see
https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Dpkg/FAQ for more details), for example:
apt-cache dumpavail | dpkg --merge-avail
or with dpkg 1.17.6 and earlier:
avail=`mktemp` apt-cache dumpavail >"$avail"
dpkg --merge-avail "$avail" rm "$avail"
you can install it with:
dpkg --clear-selections dpkg --set-selections <myselections
Note that this will not actually install or remove anything, but just set the
selection state on the requested packages. You will need some other
application to actually download and install the requested packages. For
example, run
apt-get dselect-upgrade.
Ordinarily, you will find that
dselect(1) provides a more convenient way
to modify the package selection states.
ADDITIONAL FUNCTIONALITY¶
Additional functionality can be gained by installing any of the following
packages:
apt,
aptitude and
debsums.
SEE ALSO¶
aptitude(1),
apt(1),
dselect(1),
dpkg-deb(1),
dpkg-query(1),
deb(5),
deb-control(5),
dpkg.cfg(5), and
dpkg-reconfigure(8).
AUTHORS¶
See
/usr/share/doc/dpkg/THANKS for the list of people who have
contributed to
dpkg.