Recipe 3.11. Finding Out What Is Installed on a Debian System
3.11.1 Problem
You want to know
what packages are on your system, what packages files belong to, and
what's in individual packages.
3.11.2 Solution
Use the querying features of dpkg.
To list all installed packages and pipe the list to a file, use:
$ dpkg -l | tee dpkglist
To find all packages related to your search term and show their
installation status, use:
$ dpkg -l '*gnome*'
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed
|/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Description
+++-= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
pn gnome <none> (no description available)
un gnome-about <none> (no description available))
ii gnome-applets 2.4.2-1 Various applets for GNOME 2 panel
rc gnome-bin 1.4.2-18 Miscellaneous binaries used by GNOME
To find only installed packages related to your search term, use:
$ dpkg -l | grep gnome
To list files belonging to a package, use:
$ dpkg -L gnome-applets
.
/usr
/usr/share
/usr/share/lintian
/usr/share/lintian/overrides
/usr/share/lintian/overrides/gnome-applets
...
To see what package a file belongs to, use:
$ dpkg -S boing.wav
tuxkart-data: /usr/share/games/tuxkart/wavs/boing.wav
To show complete package information, use:
$ dpkg -s kpoker
Package: kpoker
Status: install ok installed
Priority: optional
Section: games
Installed-Size: 428
Maintainer: Daniel Schepler <schepler@debian.org>
Source: kdegames
Version: 4:3.1.5-1
....
3.11.3 Discussion
The table displayed by dpkg -l is a bit cryptic,
so here's a translation. Believe it or not,
it's ASCII art.
$ dpkg -l gnome*
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Installed/Config-files/Unpacked/Failed-config/Half-installed
|/ Err?=(none)/Hold/Reinst-required/X=both-problems (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name Version Description
+++-= = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = =
pn gnome <none> (no description available)
un gnome-about <none> (no description available))
ii gnome-applets 2.4.2-1 Various applets for GNOME 2 panel
rc gnome-bin 1.4.2-18 Miscellaneous binaries used by GNOME
On the pn gnome line, follow the
p upward; there are three
"arrows" pointing to
Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold. This
represents the state you wish the package to have (in this case,
"purge").
The next column, n, points to the
Status line, where we are informed that it is
"Not/Installed."
The third column points to the error and is empty (a good thing). As
the end of this line indicates, anything in the
Status or Err columns in
uppercase is really bad.
So, package gnome was installed once upon a
time, but I desired it purged, and so it was.
un means a package has never been installed.
ii means a package is desired and installed.
rc means a package was once installed but then
was removed, leaving the configuration files behind. This is easy to
check:
$ dpkg -L gnome-bin
/etc/logcheck/ignore.d.server/gnome-bin
/etc/logcheck/ignore.d.workstation/gnome-bin
3.11.4 See Also
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