Linux Package Commands + Wajig
Saturday, 20 December 2008
Aptitude or Apt-Get
Was asked this recently, as far as I know the only core difference is Aptitude has a better way of handling dependencies when you remove a package; cleans up better. In all you should try to switch to Aptitude where possible, if you've installed a package with Aptitude then when you remove it via Aptitude it'll know about any dependencies it has to check for or orphaned packages.
Update and Upgrade
apt-get update
apt-get -u upgrade
aptitude update
aptitude safe-upgrade
Install Package
apt-get install gedit
aptitude install gedit
Remove Package (keep config files)
apt-get remove gedit
aptitude remove gedit
Remove Package Completely
apt-get --purge remove gedit
aptitude purge gedit
Upgrade Package
apt-get install gedit
List Possible Upgrades
apt-get upgrade gedit
Show Package Info
dpkg --info gedit*.deb | less
List All Packages
dpkg -l
Check if Package install plus Info
dpkg -l | grep -i 'gedit'
List files owned by package
dpkg -L gedit
List files inside Package
dpkg --contents gedit*.deb
Find out who owns this Package
dpkg -S /bin/netstat
Check if Package installed and it's Status
dpkg -s gedit| grep Status
Show Dependencies for a Package
apt-cache depends mysql-server
Wajig
Wajig is a Linux tool that combines a lot of the abilities within apt-*, aptitude and dpkg into one command. Written in Python it handles normal users and super-user privileges & can be installed with...
apt-get install wajig
aptitude install wajig
More info here
Better Installs with Aptitude
Sunday, 02 December 2007
As you'll gather by now in Linux (Ubuntu) you usually install new software on your box with:
sudo apt-get install postfix
Even though this is ok, with the latest release of Ubuntu (Gutsy 7.10) comes a better installer called Aptitude (thanks to the Debian / Linux guys).
Aptitude in essence does the same that apt-get does, however it does extra background checks to make sure your keeping your system clean and that you can properly remove packages if need be.
Hence given the choice, try to use aptitude in place of apt-get where you can; you won't regret it.
sudo aptitude install postfix
