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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | COMMANDS | OPTIONS | EXIT STATUS | ENVIRONMENT | SECURITY | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
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dpkg-query(1) dpkg suite dpkg-query(1)
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 /usr/local/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 patterns. However the output can be
customized using the --showformat option.
The default output format gives one line per matching package,
each line consisting of the package name and its installed
version, separated by a tab. The package name will be
architecture qualified for packages with a Multi-Arch field
with the value same or with a foreign architecture, which is
an architecture that is neither the native one nor all.
-s, --status [package-name...]
Report status of specified packages. 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-names are listed, the requested lists of
files are separated by an empty line, with the same order as
specified on the argument list.
Each file diversion is printed on its own line after its
diverted file, prefixed with one of the following localized
strings:
locally diverted to: diverted-to
package diverts others to: diverted-to
diverted by pkg to: diverted-to
Hint: When machine parsing the output, it is customary to set
the locale to C.UTF-8 to get reproducible results. On some
systems this might also require adapting the LANGUAGE
environment variable appropriately if it is already set (see
locale(7)).
This command will not list extra files created by maintainer
scripts, nor will it list alternatives.
--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
patterns. 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.
The output format consists of one line per matching pattern,
with a list of packages owning the pathname separated by a
comma (U+002C ‘,’) and a space (U+0020 ‘ ’), followed by a
colon (U+003A ‘:’) and a space, followed by the pathname. As
in:
pkgname1, pkgname2: pathname1
pkgname3: pathname2
File diversions are printed with the following localized
strings:
diversion by pkgname from: diverted-from
diversion by pkgname to: diverted-to
or for local diversions:
local diversion from: diverted-from
local diversion to: diverted-to
Hint: When machine parsing the output, it is customary to set
the locale to C.UTF-8 to get reproducible results.
-p, --print-avail [package-name...]
Display details about packages, as found in
/usr/local/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 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 /usr/local/var/lib/dpkg.
--root=directory
Set the root directory to directory, which sets the
administrative directory to «directory/usr/local/var/lib/dpkg»
(since dpkg 1.21.0).
--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
Description-md5 (internal, front-end related)
Enhances
Protected
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
SHA1 (internal, front-end related)
SHA256 (internal, front-end related)
SHA512 (internal, front-end related)
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 packages with a
Multi-Arch field with the value same or with a foreign
architecture, which is an architecture that is neither the
native one nor all.
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 -f='${binary:Package} ${Version}\t${Maintainer}\n' \
-W 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.
External environment
SHELL
Sets the program to execute when spawning a command via a
shell (since dpkg 1.19.2).
PAGER
DPKG_PAGER
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). If none of the programs pointed by DPKG_PAGER
or PAGER are present, the following programs will be tried in
order (since dpkg 1.22.12): the default pager less, then less,
more, and finally cat.
DPKG_ROOT
If set and the --root option has not been specified, it will
be used as the filesystem root directory (since dpkg 1.21.0).
DPKG_ADMINDIR
If set and the --admindir option has not been specified, it
will be used as the dpkg data directory.
DPKG_DEBUG
Sets the debug mask (since dpkg 1.21.10) from an octal value.
The currently accepted flags are described in the dpkg --debug
option, but not all these flags might have an effect on this
program.
DPKG_COLORS
Sets the color mode (since dpkg 1.18.5). The currently
accepted values are: auto (default), always and never.
DPKG_NLS
If set, it will be used to decide whether to activate Native
Language Support, also known as internationalization (or i18n)
support (since dpkg 1.22.7). The accepted values are: 0 and 1
(default).
Internal environment
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".
Query operations should never require root, and delegating their
execution to unprivileged users via some gain-root command can
have security implications (such as privilege escalation), for
example when a pager is automatically invoked by the tool.
dpkg(1).
This page is part of the dpkg (Debian Package Manager) project.
Information about the project can be found at
⟨https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Dpkg/⟩. If you have a bug report
for this manual page, see
⟨http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?src=dpkg⟩. This
page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository ⟨git
clone https://git.dpkg.org/git/dpkg/dpkg.git⟩ on 2025-08-11. (At
that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in
the repository was 2025-08-06.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org
1.22.12-10-g32fee 2025-01-01 dpkg-query(1)
Pages that refer to this page: dpkg(1), dpkg-deb(1)
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HTML rendering created 2025-09-06 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
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