Package management in Ubuntu

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Package management in Ubuntu

Package management commands

Update package metadata

To get list of latest packages from repository servers use:

sudo apt-get update

Install package

To installing package use:

sudo apt-get install <package-name>

Searching package

To search for a package with name or word in description use:

apt-cache search <word>

List installed packages

To get list of all installed packages use:

dpkg --get-selections

Package information

To get information about package use:

apt-cache show <package-name>

Removing package cache

To delete complete cache, except locks, use:

apt-get clean

Removing obsolete packages

To remove packages that are no longer avaialble in parent repo for download from local apt-cache use:

apt-get autoclean

Packages required for given package

Sometimes a package would require some other package or library to be installed for it to function properly. List of such dependencies can be obtained using:

apt-cache depends <package-name>

Packages that need given package

It is possible that a given package 'A' is required by some other installed package 'B' where 'B' depends on 'A' for it to function properly. To obtain list of all reversly dependent packages [B] for package A use:

apt-cache rdepends <package-name>

Package management tools

Package management tools supported by Ubuntu are:

aptitude

ncurses based

synaptic

Graphical

Learn more at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/AptGet/Howto

Miscellaneous issues

Copying apt-cache

To copy apt-cache from one machine to other so that the same packages do not get downloaded from Internet again copy contents of folder '/var/cache/apt' to other machine.

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