This blog explains how
quickly you can learn to install, remove, update and search software packages using apt-get and apt-cache commands from
the command line. This article provides some useful commands that will help you
to handle package management in Debian/Ubuntu based systems.
What is
apt-get?
The apt-get utility is a powerful and
free package management command line program, that is used to work with Ubuntu’s APT (Advanced Packaging Tool)
library to perform installation of new software packages, removing existing
software packages, upgrading of existing software packages and even used to
upgrading the entire operating system.
What is apt-cache?
The apt-cache command line tool is used
for searching apt software package cache. In simple words, this tool is used to
search software packages, collects information of packages and also used to
search for what available packages are ready for installation on Debian or Ubuntu based systems.
1. How Do I List All
Available Packages?
To list all the available
packages, type the following command.
pipenightdreams
mumudvb
tbb-examples
libsvm-java
libmrpt-hmtslam0.9
libboost-timer1.50-dev
kcm-touchpad
g++-4.5-multilib
...
2. How Do I Find Out Package Name and
Description of Software?
To find out the package name and with it description before installing, use the
‘search‘ flag. Using “search”
with apt-cache will display a list of matched packages with short
description. Let’s say you would like to find out description of package ‘vsftpd‘, then command would be.
ccze - A robust, modular log coloriser
ftpd - File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server
yasat - simple stupid audit tool
To find and list down all the packages starting with ‘vsftpd‘, you could use the following command.
3. How Do I
Check Package Information?
For example, if you would like to check information of
package along with it short description say (version number, check sums, size,
installed size, category etc). Use ‘show‘ sub command as shown below.
Priority: optional
Section: universe/net
Installed-Size: 30
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com>
Original-Maintainer: Ruben Molina <rmolina@udea.edu.co>
Architecture: all
Version: 1.10-40
Depends: netcat-traditional (>= 1.10-39)
Filename: pool/universe/n/netcat/netcat_1.10-40_all.deb
Size: 3340
MD5sum: 37c303f02b260481fa4fc9fb8b2c1004
SHA1: 0371a3950d6967480985aa014fbb6fb898bcea3a
SHA256: eeecb4c93f03f455d2c3f57b0a1e83b54dbeced0918ae563784e86a37bcc16c9
Description-en: TCP/IP swiss army knife -- transitional package
This is a "dummy" package that depends on lenny's default version of
netcat, to ease upgrades. It may be safely removed.
Description-md5: 1353f8c1d079348417c2180319bdde09
Bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+filebug
Origin: Ubuntu
4. How Do I
Check Dependencies for Specific Packages?
Use the ‘showpkg‘ sub command to check the dependencies for particular
software packages. whether those dependencies packages are installed or not.
For example, use the ‘showpkg‘ command along with package-name.
Versions:
2.3.5-3ubuntu1 (/var/lib/apt/lists/in.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_quantal_main_binary-i386_Packages)
Description Language:
File: /var/lib/apt/lists/in.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_quantal_main_binary-i386_Packages
MD5: 81386f72ac91a5ea48f8db0b023f3f9b
Description Language: en
File: /var/lib/apt/lists/in.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_quantal_main_i18n_Translation-en
MD5: 81386f72ac91a5ea48f8db0b023f3f9b
Reverse Depends:
ubumirror,vsftpd
harden-servers,vsftpd
Dependencies:
2.3.5-3ubuntu1 - debconf (18 0.5) debconf-2.0 (0 (null)) upstart-job (0 (null)) libc6 (2 2.15) libcap2 (2 2.10) libpam0g (2 0.99.7.1) libssl1.0.0 (2 1.0.0) libwrap0 (2 7.6-4~) adduser (0 (null)) libpam-modules (0 (null)) netbase (0 (null)) logrotate (0 (null)) ftp-server (0 (null)) ftp-server (0 (null))
Provides:
2.3.5-3ubuntu1 - ftp-server
Reverse Provides:
5. How Do I
Check statistics of Cache
The ‘stats‘ sub command will display overall statistics about the
cache. For example, the following command will display Total package names is
the number of packages have found in the cache.
Total package structures: 51868 (2,490 k)
Normal packages: 39505
Pure virtual packages: 602
Single virtual packages: 3819
Mixed virtual packages: 1052
Missing: 6890
Total distinct versions: 43015 (2,753 k)
Total distinct descriptions: 81048 (1,945 k)
Total dependencies: 252299 (7,064 k)
Total ver/file relations: 45567 (729 k)
Total Desc/File relations: 81048 (1,297 k)
Total Provides mappings: 8228 (165 k)
Total globbed strings: 286 (3,518 )
Total dependency version space: 1,145 k
Total slack space: 62.6 k
Total space accounted for: 13.3 M
6. How to Update System
Packages
The
‘update‘ command is used to
resynchronize the package index files from the their sources specified in /etc/apt/sources.list file.
The update command fetched the packages from their locations and update the
packages to newer version.
Ign http://security.ubuntu.com quantal-security InRelease
Get:1 http://security.ubuntu.com quantal-security Release.gpg [933 B]
Get:2 http://security.ubuntu.com quantal-security Release [49.6 kB]
Ign http://in.archive.ubuntu.com quantal InRelease
Ign http://in.archive.ubuntu.com quantal-updates InRelease
Get:3 http://repo.varnish-cache.org precise InRelease [13.7 kB]
Ign http://in.archive.ubuntu.com quantal-backports InRelease
Hit http://in.archive.ubuntu.com quantal Release.gpg
Get:4 http://security.ubuntu.com quantal-security/main Sources [34.8 kB]
Get:5 http://in.archive.ubuntu.com quantal-updates Release.gpg [933 B]
...
7. How to Upgrade Software Packages
The
‘upgrade‘ command is used to upgrade
all the currently installed software packages on the system. Under any
circumstances currently installed packages are not removed or packages which
are not already installed neither retrieved and installed to satisfy upgrade
dependencies.
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages have been kept back:
linux-headers-generic linux-image-generic wine1.5 wine1.5-i386
The following packages will be upgraded:
activity-log-manager-common activity-log-manager-control-center adium-theme-ubuntu alacarte
alsa-base app-install-data-partner appmenu-gtk appmenu-gtk3 apport apport-gtk apt
apt-transport-https apt-utils aptdaemon aptdaemon-data at-spi2-core bamfdaemon base-files bind9-host
...
However,
if you want to upgrade, unconcerned of whether software packages will be added
or removed to fulfill dependencies, use the ‘dist-upgrade‘ sub
command.
8. How Do I Install or Upgrade
Specific Packages?
The
‘install‘ sub command is tracked by one
or more packages wish for installation or upgrading.
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following extra packages will be installed:
netcat-traditional
The following NEW packages will be installed:
netcat netcat-traditional
0 upgraded, 2 newly installed, 0 to remove and 328 not upgraded.
Need to get 67.1 kB of archives.
After this operation, 186 kB of additional disk space will be used.
Do you want to continue [Y/n]? y
Get:1 http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ quantal/universe netcat-traditional i386 1.10-40 [63.8 kB]
Get:2 http://in.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ quantal/universe netcat all 1.10-40 [3,340 B]
Fetched 67.1 kB in 1s (37.5 kB/s)
Selecting previously unselected package netcat-traditional.
(Reading database ... 216118 files and directories currently installed.)
Unpacking netcat-traditional (from .../netcat-traditional_1.10-40_i386.deb) ...
Selecting previously unselected package netcat.
Unpacking netcat (from .../netcat_1.10-40_all.deb) ...
Processing triggers for man-db ...
Setting up netcat-traditional (1.10-40) ...
Setting up netcat (1.10-40) ...
9. How I can Install Multiple
Packages?
You
can add more than one package name along with the command in order to install
multiple packages at the same time. For example, the following command will
install packages ‘nethogs‘ and ‘goaccess‘.
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
goaccess is already the newest version.
nethogs is already the newest version.
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 328 not upgraded.
10. How to Install Several Packages
using Wildcard
With
the help of regular expression you can add several packages with one string.
For example, we use *wildcard to install several
packages that contains the ‘*name*‘ string, name would be
‘package-name’.
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