102.4.

Use Debian package management

weight: 3

Candidates should be able to perform package management using the Debian

package tools.

• Install, upgrade and uninstall Debian binary packages.

• Find packages containing specific files or libraries which may or may not be
installed.
• Obtain package information like version, content, dependencies, package
integrity and installation status (whether or not the package is installed).

• /etc/apt/sources.list

• dpkg
• dpkg-reconfigure
• apt-get
• apt-cache
• aptitude

Concept of the package management system

Linux used to be based on compiling source code but then Distributions arrived. Most
distributions have their own Package Manager for installing pre-build programs from
defined repositories. Debian based distros use .deb files with apt, dpkg, aptitude and
Fedora, RedHat, RHEL, SUSE, .. use RPM and Yum package managers.

Installing packages
We do not have "bzr" installed.
test@localhost:~/w/lpic/101$ bzr
The program 'bzr' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install bzr
test@localhost:~/w/lpic/101$ which bzr
test@localhost:~/w/lpic/101$ type bzr
bash: type: bzr: not found
so lets install it. If we have the .deb file:
apt-get install bzr
note that

• apt-get install asked for confirmation (Y)

• apt-get resolved dependencies, it know what is needed to install this package
and installs them
• debian packages are something.deb
 bzr

if you only want a dry-run / simulation:

apt-get install -s bzr
and this will only download the files without installing them:
apt-get install --download-only bzr
which only ownloaded files are stored them at /var/cache/apt/archive/ (or use the -d
switch instead)

Package location
where these packages come from? from a Repository of
different Repositories which are defined at /etc/apt/sources.list file and files located
at /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ in the form of:
$ cat /etc/apt/sources.list

deb http://ir.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ utopic-updates multiverse

## N.B. software from this repository may not have been tested as
## extensively as that contained in the main release, although it includes
## newer versions of some applications which may provide useful features.
## Also, please note that software in backports WILL NOT receive any review
## or updates from the Ubuntu security team.
deb http://ir.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ utopic-backports main restricted universe
multiverse

deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu utopic-security main restricted

deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu utopic-security universe
deb http://security.ubuntu.com/ubuntu utopic-security multiverse
Updating sources information:
apt-get update

Removing debian packages

apt-get remove bzr
and if you want to remove automatically installed dependencies:
$ apt-get autoremove bzr
or even
$ apt-get autoremove
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
The following packages will be REMOVED:
linux-image-3.16.0-25-generic linux-image-extra-3.16.0-25-generic
0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 2 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
After this operation, 203 MB disk space will be freed.
Do you want to continue? [Y/n] y
Notes:

• removing a package will not remove its dependencies

• if removing a dependency, you'll get a warning about what will be removed
alongside this package

searching for packages

$ apt-cache search "tiny window"
$ aptitude search grub2

Updating
for updating a single package
apt-get install tzdata
and for upgrading whatever installed:
apt-get upgrade
or going to a new distribution:
apt-get dist-upgrade
Note: as most other tools, you can configure the default configs at /etc/apt/apt.conf
and there is a program apt-config for this purpose.

reconfiguring packages
A program called debconf configures packages after they are installed. you can
reconfigure a package (say tzdata) using
dpkg-reconfigure tzdata

package information with dpkg

dpkg is a very powerful tool for working with .deb package files. If you want to see
what is inside a .deb file:
$ dpkg --contents bzr_2.6.0+bzr6595-1ubuntu1_all.deb
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2014-05-02 18:16 ./
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2014-05-02 18:15 ./etc/
drwxr-xr-x root/root 0 2014-05-02 18:15 ./etc/bash_completion.d/
-rw-r--r-- root/root 1467 2010-04-22 11:31 ./etc/bash_completion.d/bzr
...
...
another apt tool is dpkg. dpkg can install, remove, configure and query packages a nd
as always the config is at /etc/dpkg/dpkg.cfg and uses /var/lib/dpkg tree . the most
important switch is -s for status.
$ dpkg -s bzr
Package: bzr
Status: deinstall ok config-files
Priority: optional
Section: vcs
Installed-Size: 102
Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com>
Architecture: all
Version: 2.6.0+bzr6595-1ubuntu1
Config-Version: 2.6.0+bzr6595-1ubuntu1
Depends: python-bzrlib (<= 2.6.0+bzr6595-1ubuntu1.1~), python-bzrlib (>=
2.6.0+bzr6595-1ubuntu1), python:any
Recommends: python-gpgme
Suggests: bzr-doc, bzrtools, python-bzrlib.tests
Breaks: bzr-pqm (<< 1.4.0~bzr80), bzr-xmloutput (<< 0.8.8+bzr160), python-bzrlib
(<< 2.4.0~beta3~)
Conffiles:
/etc/bash_completion.d/bzr b8d9ca95521a7c5f14860e205a854da2
Description: easy to use distributed version control system
Bazaar is a distributed version control system designed to be easy to
use and intuitive, able to adapt to many workflows, reliable, and
easily extendable.
.
Publishing of branches can be done over plain HTTP, that is, no special
software is needed on the server to host Bazaar branches. Branches can
be pushed to the server via sftp (which most SSH installations come
with), FTP, or over a custom and faster protocol if bzr is installed in
the remote end.
.
Merging in Bazaar is easy, as the implementation is able to avoid many
spurious conflicts, deals well with repeated merges between branches,
and is able to handle modifications to renamed files correctly.
.
Bazaar is written in Python, and has a flexible plugin interface which
can be used to extend its functionality. Many plugins exist, providing
useful commands (bzrtools), graphical interfaces (qbzr), or native
interaction with Subversion branches (bzr-svn).
.
Install python-paramiko if you are going to push branches to remote
hosts with sftp, and python-pycurl if you'd like for SSL certificates
always to be verified.
Homepage: http://bazaar-vcs.org
Original-Maintainer: Debian Bazaar Maintainers <pkg-bazaar-
maint@lists.alioth.debian.org>
another command is purge which will remove the package and all of its
configurations.. the switch is -P or --purge.

There is also -L to check the files and directories a package installed:

$ dpkg -L jcal
/.
/usr
/usr/bin
/usr/bin/jcal
/usr/share
/usr/share/doc
/usr/share/doc/jcal
/usr/share/doc/jcal/README
/usr/share/doc/jcal/copyright
/usr/share/man
/usr/share/man/man1
/usr/share/man/man1/jcal.1.gz
/usr/share/doc/jcal/changelog.Debian.gz
and -S will show which package installed the given file:
$ dpkg -S /var/lib/mplayer/prefs/mirrors
mplayer: /var/lib/mplayer/prefs/mirrors
Note: you can also use which for finding out what file will be used on any given
command:
test@localhost:~/w/lpic/101$ which java
/usr/bin/java

aptitude
is a newer tool for managing files. It can be used like this:
$ aptitude install jcal
$ aptitude remove jcal
$ aptitude search cal
$ aptitude show bzr
or it can also be used as a standalone program: