Linux server administration/dpkg

dpkg is a package management software used among others by Debian operating system. It can be used to install, remove, and provide information about .deb packages.

New package configurations will append a *.dpkg-old OR *.dpkg-dist.

Basic dpkg commands

• Install a .deb package:
  • dpkg -i filename.deb
• Remove an installed package:
  • dpkg -r package_name

• Get Information about a package
  • dpkg -s package_name (-s status). See also: apt-cache policy package_name

• List of installed packages in your computer can be obtained with:
  • dpkg -l [optional pattern]
• List files in a package:
  • dpkg -L package_name
  • dpkg-query -L package_name

• Find package owner of a file:
  • dpkg -S `which file_to_search` (-S Search)

• List content of a package, content can be extracted suing ar command:
  • dpkg -c /path/to/package_name.deb

• Get a list of recently installed packages
  • zcat -f /var/log/dpkg.log* | grep "\ install\ " | sort

• Get a list of recently upgraded packages
  • zcat -f /var/log/dpkg.log* | grep "\ upgrade\ " | sort

• Get a list of recently installed or upgraded packages
  • zcat -f /var/log/dpkg.log* | egrep "\ install\ |\ upgrade\ " | sort -nk1

• dpkg --configure -a

Example Outputs of dpkg commands

• dpkg -s sysstat

Package: sysstat
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: admin
Installed-Size: 1336
Maintainer: Robert Luberda <robert@debian.org>
Architecture: amd64
Version: 11.4.3-2
Depends: lsb-base (>= 3.0-6), ucf (>= 2.003), xz-utils, debconf (>= 0.5) | debconf-2.0, libc6 (>= 2.14), libsensors4 (>= 1:3.0.0)
Recommends: cron | cron-daemon
Suggests: isag
Conffiles:
 /etc/cron.d/sysstat 455c3c071b6daabb4e4490828975034c
 /etc/cron.daily/sysstat 19b1317e195208eed1a0bcd68be2e637
 /etc/init.d/sysstat 577050178b0105b10118acfe3335de3f
 /etc/sysstat/sysstat ca4bb64ec3044408fed750d0d3d7769a
 /etc/sysstat/sysstat.ioconf fa92b01baa2130e26822c30fb27ac56e
Description: system performance tools for Linux
 The sysstat package contains the following system performance tools:
  - sar: collects and reports system activity information;
  - iostat: reports CPU utilization and disk I/O statistics;
  - tapestat: reports statistics for tapes connected to the system;
  - mpstat: reports global and per-processor statistics;
  - pidstat: reports statistics for Linux tasks (processes);
  - sadf: displays data collected by sar in various formats;
  - cifsiostat: reports I/O statistics for CIFS filesystems.
 .
 The statistics reported by sar deal with I/O transfer rates,
 paging activity, process-related activities, interrupts,
 network activity, memory and swap space utilization, CPU
 utilization, kernel activities and TTY statistics, among
 others. Both UP and SMP machines are fully supported.
Homepage: http://pagesperso-orange.fr/sebastien.godard/

Activities

Basic

1. Read apt and snap page
2. Install a package using dkpg
3. Understand differences between apt and dpkg

Advanced

1. Read uscanhttps://manpages.debian.org/buster/devscripts/uscan.1.en.html and https://wiki.debian.org/debian/watch to understand how new packages are generated: https://manpages.debian.org/buster/devscripts/uscan.1.en.html

See Also

• apt, snap and RPM (Linux)
• Wikipedia:dpkg
• Wikipedia:APT (Debian)
• w:Deb_(file_format) to understand .deb internal format an included files: preinst, postinst, prerm and postrm.
• pkgutil (MacOS)
• brew (MacOS), command of the Homebrew package management software w:Homebrew (package management software)
• pkg (FreeBSD)
• w:apt-file to view the contents of debian packages on remote repositories