Linux Package Management

Sometimes when installing packages you need to know the version of the current distribution that you have.

Output shows Debian version number.

cat /etc/Debian_version

Output shows Ubuntu version number.

cat /etc/*-release

Output shows Redhat / CentOS version number.

cat /etc/redhat-release

Debian Package Management

The sources list of all the repos

cat /etc/apt/sources.list

Or sometimes

cat /etc/apt/sources.list.d/official-package-repositories.list

Search the apt package manager cache

apt-cache search nginx

Update the cache

apt-get update

Show cache information on the package.

apt-cache show nginx

Show some basic statistics

apt-cache stats

Remove packages and config files

apt-get purge

autoclean - Erase old downloaded archive files

apt-get autoclean

Remove automatically all unused packages

apt-get autoremove

List installed packages, shows version and package description

dpkg -l

Lists installed packages but no extra info

dpkg --get-selections

Install a package

dpkg -i <deb file>

Unable to lock the administration directory (/var/lib/dpkg/)

Occasionally when this error occurs the following steps are normally sufficient to solve

Kill any running apt processes

ps -A | grep apt
kill -9 processnumber

Delete the lock files

rm /var/lib/dpkg/lock

Force the packages to reconfigure

dpkg --configure -a

Update package source list

apt-get update

Redhat / CentOS / RPM Based Distros

List all installed RPMs on an RPM based Linux distro.

rpm -qa

Check installed RPM is patched against CVE, grep the output for CVE.

rpm -q --changelog openvpn

YUM Commands

Package manager used by RPM based systems, you can pull some useful information about installed packages and or install additional tools.

Update all RPM packages with YUM, also shows whats out of date.

yum update

Update individual packages, in this example HTTPD (Apache).

yum update httpd

Install a package using YUM.

yum install package

Exclude a package from being updates with YUM.

yum --exclude=package kernel* update

Remove package with YUM.

yum remove package

Remove package with YUM.

yum erase package

Lists info about yum package.

yum list package

What a packages does, e.g Apache HTTPD Server.

yum provides httpd

Shows package info, architecture, version etc.

yum info httpd

Use YUM to install local RPM, settles deps from repo.

yum localinstall blah.rpm

Shows deps for a package.

yum deplist package

List all installed packages.

yum list installed | more

Show all YUM groups.

yum grouplist | more

Development Tools Install YUM group.

yum groupinstall