dpkg-query - a tool to query the dpkg database
dpkg-query [
option...]
command
dpkg-query is a tool to show information about packages listed in the
dpkg database.
-
-l, --list
[package-name-pattern...]
- List all known packages matching one or more patterns,
regardless of their status, which includes any real or virtual package
referenced in any dependency relationship field (such as Breaks,
Enhances, etc.). If no package-name-pattern is given, list
all packages in /var/lib/dpkg/status, excluding the ones marked as
not-installed (i.e. those which have been previously purged). Normal shell
wildcard characters are allowed in package-name-pattern. Please
note you will probably have to quote package-name-pattern to
prevent the shell from performing filename expansion. For example this
will list all package names starting with “libc6”:
The first three columns of the output show the desired action, the package
status, and errors, in that order.
Desired action:
- u = Unknown
- i = Install
- h = Hold
- r = Remove
- p = Purge
Package status:
- n = Not-installed
- c = Config-files
- H = Half-installed
- U = Unpacked
- F = Half-configured
- W = Triggers-awaiting
- t = Triggers-pending
- i = Installed
Error flags:
- <empty> = (none)
- R = Reinst-required
An uppercase status or error letter indicates the package is likely to cause
severe problems. Please refer to
dpkg(1) for information about the
above states and flags.
The output format of this option is not configurable, but varies automatically
to fit the terminal width. It is intended for human readers, and is not easily
machine-readable. See
-W (
--show) and
--showformat for a
way to configure the output format.
-
-W, --show
[package-name-pattern...]
- Just like the --list option this will list all
packages matching the given patterns. However the output can be customized
using the --showformat option.
The default output format gives one line per matching package, each line
consisting of the package name and its installed version, separated by a
tab. The package name will be architecture qualified for packages with a
Multi-Arch field with the value same or with a foreign
architecture, which is an architecture that is neither the native one nor
all.
-
-s, --status [package-name...]
- Report status of specified packages. This just displays the
entry in the installed package status database. If no package-name
is specified it will display all package entries in the status database
(since dpkg 1.19.1). When multiple package-name entries are listed,
the requested status entries are separated by an empty line, with the same
order as specified on the argument list.
-
-L, --listfiles package-name...
- List files installed to your system from
package-name. When multiple package-names are listed, the
requested lists of files are separated by an empty line, with the same
order as specified on the argument list.
Each file diversion is printed on its own line after its diverted file,
prefixed with one of the following localized strings:
locally diverted to: diverted-to
package diverts others to: diverted-to
diverted by pkg to: diverted-to
Hint: When machine parsing the output, it is customary to set the locale to
C.UTF-8 to get reproducible results.
This command will not list extra files created by maintainer scripts, nor
will it list alternatives.
-
--control-list package-name
- List control files installed to your system from
package-name (since dpkg 1.16.5). These can be used as input
arguments to --control-show.
-
--control-show package-name
control-file
- Print the control-file installed to your system from
package-name to the standard output (since dpkg 1.16.5).
-
-c, --control-path package-name
[control-file]
- List paths for control files installed to your system from
package-name (since dpkg 1.15.4). If control-file is
specified then only list the path for that control file if it is present.
Warning: this command is deprecated as it gives direct access to the
internal dpkg database, please switch to use --control-list and
--control-show instead for all cases where those commands might
give the same end result. Although, as long as there is still at least one
case where this command is needed (i.e. when having to remove a damaging
postrm maintainer script), and while there is no good solution for that,
this command will not get removed.
-
-S, --search
filename-search-pattern...
- Search for packages that own files corresponding to the
given patterns. Standard shell wildcard characters can be used in the
pattern, where asterisk ( *) and question mark (?) will
match a slash, and backslash ( \) will be used as an escape
character.
If the first character in the filename-search-pattern is none of
‘ *[?/’ then it will be considered a substring match
and will be implicitly surrounded by ‘ *’ (as in
* filename-search-pattern*). If the subsequent string
contains any of ‘ *[?\’, then it will handled like a
glob pattern, otherwise any trailing ‘ /’ or ‘
/.’ will be removed and a literal path lookup will be
performed.
This command will not list extra files created by maintainer scripts, nor
will it list alternatives.
The output format consists of one line per matching pattern, with a list of
packages owning the pathname separated by a comma (U+002C ‘
,’) and a space (U+0020 ‘ ’), followed
by a colon (U+003A ‘ :’) and a space, followed by the
pathname. As in:
pkgname1, pkgname2: pathname1
pkgname3: pathname2
File diversions are printed with the following localized strings:
diversion by pkgname from: diverted-from
diversion by pkgname to: diverted-to
or for local diversions:
local diversion from: diverted-from
local diversion to: diverted-to
Hint: When machine parsing the output, it is customary to set the locale to
C.UTF-8 to get reproducible results.
-
-p, --print-avail
[package-name...]
- Display details about packages, as found in
/var/lib/dpkg/available. If no package-name is specified, it
will display all package entries in the available database (since
dpkg 1.19.1). When multiple package-name are listed, the requested
available entries are separated by an empty line, with the same
order as specified on the argument list.
Users of APT-based frontends should use apt show package-name
instead as the available file is only kept up-to-date when using
dselect.
-
-?, --help
- Show the usage message and exit.
- --version
- Show the version and exit.
-
--admindir=dir
- Change the location of the dpkg database. The
default location is /var/lib/dpkg.
-
--root=directory
- Set the root directory to directory, which sets the
administrative directory to « directory/var/lib/dpkg»
(since dpkg 1.21.0).
- --load-avail
- Also load the available file when using the --show
and --list commands, which now default to only querying the status
file (since dpkg 1.16.2).
- --no-pager
- Disables the use of any pager when showing information
(since dpkg 1.19.2).
-
-f, --showformat=format
- This option is used to specify the format of the output
--show will produce (short option since dpkg 1.13.1). The format is
a string that will be output for each package listed.
In the format string, “ \” introduces escapes:
-
\n newline
-
\r carriage return
-
\t tab
“
\” before any other character suppresses any special
meaning of the following character, which is useful for “
\” and “
$”.
Package information can be included by inserting variable references to package
fields using the syntax “
${field[
;width]
}”. Fields are
printed right-aligned unless the width is negative in which case left
alignment will be used. The following
fields are recognized but they
are not necessarily available in the status file (only internal fields or
fields stored in the binary package end up in it):
- Architecture
- Bugs
-
Conffiles (internal)
-
Config-Version (internal)
- Conflicts
- Breaks
- Depends
- Description
- Enhances
- Protected
- Essential
-
Filename (internal, front-end related)
- Homepage
- Installed-Size
-
MD5sum (internal, front-end related)
-
MSDOS-Filename (internal, front-end related)
- Maintainer
- Origin
- Package
- Pre-Depends
- Priority
- Provides
- Recommends
- Replaces
-
Revision (obsolete)
- Section
-
Size (internal, front-end related)
- Source
-
Status (internal)
- Suggests
-
Tag (usually not in .deb but in repository Packages
files)
-
Triggers-Awaited (internal)
-
Triggers-Pending (internal)
- Version
The following are virtual fields, generated by
dpkg-query from values
from other fields (note that these do not use valid names for fields in
control files):
- binary:Package
- It contains the binary package name with a possible
architecture qualifier like “libc6:amd64” (since dpkg
1.16.2). An architecture qualifier will be present to make the package
name unambiguous, for packages with a Multi-Arch field with the
value same or with a foreign architecture, which is an architecture
that is neither the native one nor all.
- binary:Synopsis
- It contains the package short description (since dpkg
1.19.1).
- binary:Summary
- This is an alias for binary:Synopsis (since dpkg
1.16.2).
- db:Status-Abbrev
- It contains the abbreviated package status (as three
characters), such as “ii ” or “iHR” (since
dpkg 1.16.2). See the --list command description for more
details.
- db:Status-Want
- It contains the package wanted status, part of the Status
field (since dpkg 1.17.11).
- db:Status-Status
- It contains the package status word, part of the Status
field (since dpkg 1.17.11).
- db:Status-Eflag
- It contains the package status error flag, part of the
Status field (since dpkg 1.17.11).
- db-fsys:Files
- It contains the list of the package filesystem entries
separated by newlines (since dpkg 1.19.3).
- db-fsys:Last-Modified
- It contains the timestamp in seconds of the last time the
package filesystem entries were modified (since dpkg 1.19.3).
- source:Package
- It contains the source package name for this binary package
(since dpkg 1.16.2).
- source:Version
- It contains the source package version for this binary
package (since dpkg 1.16.2)
- source:Upstream-Version
- It contains the source package upstream version for this
binary package (since dpkg 1.18.16)
The default format string is “
${binary:Package}\t${Version}\n”. Actually, all other fields
found in the status file (i.e. user defined fields) can be requested, too.
They will be printed as-is, though, no conversion nor error checking is done
on them. To get the name of the
dpkg maintainer and the installed
version, you could run:
dpkg-query -f='${binary:Package} ${Version}\t${Maintainer}\n' \
-W dpkg
- 0
- The requested query was successfully performed.
- 1
- The requested query failed either fully or partially, due
to no file or package being found (except for --control-path,
--control-list and --control-show were such errors are
fatal).
- 2
- Fatal or unrecoverable error due to invalid command-line
usage, or interactions with the system, such as accesses to the database,
memory allocations, etc.
- SHELL
- Sets the program to execute when spawning a command via a
shell (since dpkg 1.19.2).
- PAGER
- DPKG_PAGER
- Sets the pager command to use (since dpkg 1.19.1), which
will be executed with « $SHELL -c». If
SHELL is not set, «sh» will be used instead.
The DPKG_PAGER overrides the PAGER environment variable
(since dpkg 1.19.2).
- DPKG_ROOT
- If set and the --root option has not been specified,
it will be used as the filesystem root directory (since dpkg 1.21.0).
- DPKG_ADMINDIR
- If set and the --admindir option has not been
specified, it will be used as the dpkg data directory.
- DPKG_DEBUG
- Sets the debug mask (since dpkg 1.21.10) from an octal
value. The currently accepted flags are described in the dpkg
--debug option, but not all these flags might have an effect on this
program.
- DPKG_COLORS
- Sets the color mode (since dpkg 1.18.5). The currently
accepted values are: auto (default), always and
never.
- LESS
- Defined by dpkg-query to
“-FRSXMQ”, if not already set, when spawning a pager
(since dpkg 1.19.2). To change the default behavior, this variable can be
preset to some other value including an empty string, or the PAGER
or DPKG_PAGER variables can be set to disable specific options with
« -+», for example DPKG_PAGER="less
-+F".
dpkg(1).