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”:
dpkg-query -l '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 pattern. However the output can be customized using the
--showformat option. The default output format gives one line per
matching package, each line having the name (extended with the
architecture qualifier for Multi-Arch same packages) and
installed version of the package, separated by a tab.
- -s, --status
[package-name...]
- Report status of specified package. 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-name are listed, the requested lists of files are
separated by an empty line, with the same order as specified on the
argument list. However, note that files created by package-specific
installation-scripts are not listed.
- --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 pattern.
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.
- -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-cache 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.
- --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
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
example if the package has a Multi-Arch field with a value of
same or the package is of a foreign architecture.
- 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 -W -f='${binary:Package} ${Version}\t${Maintainer}\n' 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).
- 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_ADMINDIR
- If set and the --admindir option has not been specified, it will be
used as the dpkg data directory.
- 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".