25 Useful Basic Commands of APT-GET and APT-CACHE for Package Management
This article explains how quickly you can learn to install, remove, update and search software packages using apt-get and apt-cache commands from the command line. This article provides some useful commands that will help you to handle package management in Debian/Ubuntu based systems.
APT-GET and APT-CACHE Commands
What is apt-get?
The apt-get utility is a powerful and free package management command line program, that is used to work with Ubuntu’s APT (Advanced Packaging Tool) library to perform installation of new software packages, removing existing software packages, upgrading of existing software packages and even used to upgrading the entire operating system.
What is apt-cache?
The apt-cache command line tool is used for searching apt software package cache. In simple words, this tool is used to search software packages, collects information of packages and also used to search for what available packages are ready for installation on Debian or Ubuntu based systems.
1. How Do I List All Available Packages?
To list all the available packages, type the following command.
$ apt-cache pkgnames
esseract-ocr-epo pipenightdreams mumudvb tbb-examples libsvm-java libmrpt-hmtslam0.9 libboost-timer1.50-dev kcm-touchpad g++-4.5-multilib ...
2. How Do I Find Out Package Name and Description of Software?
$ apt-cache search vsftpd
vsftpd - lightweight, efficient FTP server written for security ccze - A robust, modular log coloriser ftpd - File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server yasat - simple stupid audit tool
To find and list down all the packages starting with ‘vsftpd‘, you could use the following command.
$ apt-cache pkgnames vsftpd
vsttpd
3. How Do I Check Package Information?
For example, if you would like to check information of package along with it short description say (version number, check sums, size, installed size, category etc). Use ‘show‘ sub command as shown below.
$ apt-cache show netcat
Package: netcat Priority: optional Section: universe/net Installed-Size: 30 Maintainer: Ubuntu Developers <ubuntu-devel-discuss@lists.ubuntu.com> Original-Maintainer: Ruben Molina <rmolina@udea.edu.co> Architecture: all Version: 1.10-40 Depends: netcat-traditional (>= 1.10-39) Filename: pool/universe/n/netcat/netcat_1.10-40_all.deb Size: 3340 MD5sum: 37c303f02b260481fa4fc9fb8b2c1004 SHA1: 0371a3950d6967480985aa014fbb6fb898bcea3a SHA256: eeecb4c93f03f455d2c3f57b0a1e83b54dbeced0918ae563784e86a37bcc16c9 Description-en: TCP/IP swiss army knife -- transitional package This is a "dummy" package that depends on lenny's default version of netcat, to ease upgrades. It may be safely removed. Description-md5: 1353f8c1d079348417c2180319bdde09 Bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+filebug Origin: Ubuntu
4. How Do I Check Dependencies for Specific Packages?
Use the ‘showpkg‘ sub command to check the dependencies for particular software packages. whether those dependencies packages are installed or not. For example, use the ‘showpkg‘ command along with package-name.
$ apt-cache showpkg vsftpd
Package: vsftpd Versions: 2.3.5-3ubuntu1 (/var/lib/apt/lists/in.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_quantal_main_binary-i386_Packages) Description Language: File: /var/lib/apt/lists/in.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_quantal_main_binary-i386_Packages MD5: 81386f72ac91a5ea48f8db0b023f3f9b Description Language: en File: /var/lib/apt/lists/in.archive.ubuntu.com_ubuntu_dists_quantal_main_i18n_Translation-en MD5: 81386f72ac91a5ea48f8db0b023f3f9b Reverse Depends: ubumirror,vsftpd harden-servers,vsftpd Dependencies: 2.3.5-3ubuntu1 - debconf (18 0.5) debconf-2.0 (0 (null)) upstart-job (0 (null)) libc6 (2 2.15) libcap2 (2 2.10) libpam0g (2 0.99.7.1) libssl1.0.0 (2 1.0.0) libwrap0 (2 7.6-4~) adduser (0 (null)) libpam-modules (0 (null)) netbase (0 (null)) logrotate (0 (null)) ftp-server (0 (null)) ftp-server (0 (null)) Provides: 2.3.5-3ubuntu1 - ftp-server Reverse Provides: