Package management command cheat sheet

Table of Contents
  • What does a package depend on?
  • What packages depend on the given package?
  • Which package provides a given file?
  • List pre|postinst scriptlets in a package
  • List contents of a package
  • Extract contents of a package
  • List installed packages
  • Remove a package and anything that depends on it
  • Remove a package, but not things that depend on it
  • Install a package from file
  • TODO

    • Many of the following rpm commands use rpm -q <package> to query against an installed package by name. You can also query a possibly-uninstalled .rpm file with rpm -qp path/to/package.rpm.

    What does a package depend on?

    # dnf/rpm
dnf repoquery --installed --requires <package>
rpm --requires -q <package>

    You can replace --requires with --provides and --conflicts for more information.

    # apt/deb
apt-cache depends <package>

    What packages depend on the given package?

    # dnf/rpm
dnf repoquery --installed --whatrequires <package>
rpm --whatrequires -q <package>

# apt/deb
apt-cache rdepends --installed <package>

    Which package provides a given file?

    # dnf/rpm
rpm -qf <path/to/file>

# apt/deb
dpkg -S <path/to/file>

    List pre|postinst scriptlets in a package

    rpm -q <package> --scripts

# From a given .deb package
dpkg --dry-run -i <package.deb>
# From an installed .deb package
ls /var/lib/dpkg/info/<package>*

    List contents of a package

    rpm -ql <package>
rpm -qpl <package.rpm>
dpkg -L <package>
dpkg --contents <package.deb>
cat /var/lib/dpkg/info/<package>.list

    Extract contents of a package

    It's often super useful to extract the contents of a package to a temporary prefix without installing the package.

    # For an .rpm
sudo apt install rpm2cpio
mkdir prefix/
cd prefix/
rpm2cpio <package.rpm> | cpio -idmv
cd ../
tree prefix/

    # For a .deb
dpkg --contents <package.deb>
dpkg-deb -x <package.deb> prefix/

    List installed packages

    rpm -qa
dnf list --installed
apt list --installed

    Remove a package and anything that depends on it

    dnf remove <package>
apt remove <package>

    Remove a package, but not things that depend on it

    rpm --nodeps -e <package>

    Install a package from file

    rpm -i <package.rpm>
rpm --force -i <package.rpm>

# Needs ./ prefix to look for the given package file, instead of treating as a package name
dnf install --nogpgcheck ./package.rpm
apt install ./package.deb

    TODO