Debian / Ubuntu Admin Manager Package Management Cheat Sheet

For a long time, I was thirsty for not knowing how to do some elementary things in Debian package managers, but, as often happens, there was no one to ask, and they didn’t get around to writing somewhere. And finally the questions matured and I wrote my question in the debian's newsletter . Naturally it turned out that he had missed something obvious, but he also learned a lot of unobvious utility, therefore he decided to sketch a cheat sheet, maybe someone would come in handy.

Debian Admin Summary

Basic and well-known

Getting information about new / updated packages

sudo aptitude update 

Update

 sudo aptitude safe-upgrade 

Search for a package by package name

 aptitude search key_word 

Search package by exact name

 aptitude search "^name$" 

Search by description

 aptitude search "?description("key_word")" 

Package Information

 aptitude show package_name 

Installation

 sudo aptitude install package_name 

Deletion

 sudo aptitude remove package_name 

Complete deletion (along with configs)

 sudo aptitude purge package_name 

Clear cache of loaded packages (free space)

 aptitude autoclean #      aptitude clean #    

Installing a separately downloaded / created package (to create a package from third-party sources, use the checkinstall utility with the -D flag)

 sudo dpkg -i /path/to/package.deb 

For more information

 man aptitude sudo aptitude install aptitude-doc-en 

and look at the documentation (/usr/share/doc/aptitude/html/en/index.html) for a quick reference on search patterns, go here /usr/share/doc/aptitude/html/en/ch02s04.html. If you are too lazy to dock, then it is online.
Introduction to the Debian Wiki: wiki.debian.org/Aptitude

And now what is not obvious or requires a complete reading of the documentation

1. How after update to see which packages will be updated?

 aptitude search ?upgradable 

You can also use it (if you put it)

 sudo daptup 

but after installing it, the usual update will behave in the same way.

2. How to find out what has changed in the packages that will be updated?
You can try

 sudo aptitude changelog package_name 

for each package.
But it is better to put apt-listchanges, then before any installation of updates, a list of changes will be shown, the default settings are not very convenient, so it is better to reconfigure for yourself, for example, select the output format (while using text, for large updates it is probably pager better), do not send letters, asking for confirmation, display all information. To do this, run

 sudo dpkg-reconfigure apt-listchanges 

3. What should I do if the update is broken and I need to roll back?
No rollback, you can try to find a previous version of the package.

 sudo aptitude version package_name 

and install it

 sudo aptitude install package_name=version 

4. How to find all packages installed manually?
there is a command option (aptitude search '~ i! ~ M'), but unfortunately it does not give the desired result, so the question remains open, there are a lot of ways based on the analysis of logs

 /var/log/aptitude (+  ) /var/log/installer/initial-status.gz /var/log/dpkg.log (+  ) 

but there is no simple and ready-made solution, but information can theoretically be lost during rotations; you need to configure
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5. How to view the list of files in the package?
if the package is installed

 dpkg -L package_name 

for any packages, put apt-file and

 apt-file list package_name 

6. How to see which package the file belongs to?

 dpkg -S file_name 

7. How to remove all packages, where is the key in the package name?

 sudo aptitude purge ~ikey 

8. How to remove the remaining configs from remote packages?

 sudo aptitude purge ~c 

9. How to find a package that contains the file lib.so:

 apt-file search lib.so 

10. How to convert rpm package to deb?

 alien --to-deb /path/to/file.rpm 

11. How to find a list of installed kernels?

 dpkg --list linux-* | grep ii 

12. How to install the package from testing or experimental?
On this topic you need to write separately ( for example ), but if briefly, then there are commands for this

 sudo aptitude -t testing package_name 

or

 sudo aptitude package_name/testing 

13. How to remove a meta package, but leave one of the dependencies?
have to read the documentation about the key unmarkauto or look here .

14. How to find out what got into the file system past the package management system?
There is a utility cruft, although the question of interpreting the results (the report file) is still open.

 sudo cruft -d / -r report --ignore /home --ignore /var --ignore /tmp 

15. What are some additional repositories?
Debian - wiki.debian.org/UnofficialRepositories
Ubuntu - a lot of PPA

16. What else is there?
apt-cdrom
apt-spy
auto-apt . note on Habré
apt-key
apt-add-repository
Some things only apt-get can
There are alternative utilities for managing packages, such as wajig , which tries to incorporate the functionality of all the other utilities.

17. How to find packages depending on this

 apt-cache rdepends package_name 

can also come in handy

 aptitude why package_name 

I thank everyone who helped with their advice in the mailing list , LJ ( JackYF ) and Habré ( run4way , sledopit , nazarpc , AgaFonOff , amarao , traaance , adrianopol , Karamax ). Comments and additions are welcome.