apthelp: Often used stuff in the apt package management family

Alan Robert Clark

February 8, 2019

The apt system sources are configured in /etc/apt/sources.list.

deb http://debian.mirror.ac.za/debian/ stretch main contrib non-free
deb http://debian.mirror.ac.za/debian/ stretch-updates main contrib non-free
deb http://debian.mirror.ac.za/debian/ stretch-backports main contrib non-free

deb http://security.debian.org/debian-security stretch/updates main contrib non-free

Useful package-level commands are apt-get, apt-cache, and the per-package command dpkg.

`apt`	`-s`	simulate = dry-run
	`update`	Updates the database. RUN BEFORE ANY `apt` command.
	`dist-upgrade`	Same as `upgrade`, but sorts dependancies.
	`install` pkg1 pkg2…
	`download` pkg1 pkg2…	puts .deb in current dir. Proxy!
	`remove` pkg1 pkg2…
	`purge` pkg1 pkg2…	removes, including configuration files.
	`autoremove`	removes old dependancies. BEWARE! Do not leave too long!
	`check`	database sanity.
	`clean`	get rid of .deb files.

`apt-cache`	search x y	Anything with x y (-d Descrip too)
	`show` pkg	info
	`policy` pkg	installed?
	`pkgnames` pkg	Uninstalled pkgs available
	`showpkg` pkg	Deps of uninstalled pkg
	`depends` pkg	Deps of installed pkg
	`stats`	Database statistics.

`dpkg`	`-l` pkg	lists installed pkg. All w/o pkg.
	`-L` pkg	lists files installed by pkg
	`-S` filename	lists pkg to which filename belongs

This document was translated from L^AT_EX by H^EV^EA.