dpkg, APT & Aptitude commands

  • List all installed packages:
    dpkg -l
    
  • List all recently installed packages:
    zcat -f /var/log/dpkg.log* | grep "\ install\ " | sort
    
  • Install a package from a lower-priority repository, like the backport repository:
    apt-get -t squeeze-backports install my-package
    
  • Force reinstallation of a package:
    apt-get -d --reinstall install my-package
    dpkg --install --force-confmiss /var/cache/apt/archives/my-package.deb
    
  • Clean aptitude local cache:
    apt-get clean
    
  • Uninstall a package throughly (both program files and configuration):
    apt-get remove --purge my_package
    
  • Force removal of a package while ignoring all dependencies:
    dpkg --remove --force-depends libsomething
    
  • Remove orphaned pakages:
    deborphan | xargs apt-get -y remove --purge
    
  • Show the changelog of a package (here, the linux kernel of Ubuntu):
    aptitude changelog linux-generic
    
  • Which package contain a given file:
    apt-file search file_to_search
    
  • Get the list of files of a package:
    apt-file list package_name
    
  • Remove dpkg lock file:
    rm /var/lib/dpkg/lock
    
  • Hold a package with either dpkg or aptitude:
    echo "kdenlive hold" | dpkg --set-selections
    
    aptitude hold kdenlive
    
  • Unhold a package:
    echo "kdenlive install" | dpkg --set-selections
    
    aptitude unhold kdenlive
    
  • List holded packages:
    dpkg --get-selections | grep hold