Re: Determining what packages are installed

[Nathan E Norman <nnorman@incanus.net>]

On Fri, Nov 22, 2002 at 02:38:07PM -0800, Craig Dickson wrote:
> Joe Riel wrote:
> 
> > How do I determine what packages are installed?
> > Or determine whether a particular package is installed?
> > I can use deselect to check a particular package,
> > but there probably is a better way.
> 
>   dpkg -l
> 
> will give you a nice list of your installed packages.
> 
>   dpkg -l package-name
> 
> will tell you the status of a particular package.

Also, please consider these:

 dpkg -l \*expr\*

displays all packages mathing the glob (shell wildcard) pattern.

 dpkg -l '*'

displays info about all packages.

 dpkg --get-selections

shows all installed packages.

 dpkg --get-selections '*'

shows info about all packages (like `dpkg -l '*'), but in a format
that can be fed to `dpkg --set-selections'.  This is handy when you
want to clone a machine's installed package list [1].

 apt-cache search <expr>

displays all packages that match <expr> (the match can be in the
name, description, etc.).

 apt-cache show <pkg>

shows information about the package <pkg>.

 apt-cache showpkg <pkg>

displays nuts and bolts info about <pkg>.

[1] If you only feed `dpkg --set-selections a list of packages to
install, dpkg will also install all packages in base, as well as all
required packages (IIRC, someone please correct me if I'm wrong).

-- 
Nathan Norman - Incanus Networking mailto:nnorman@incanus.net
  Never tell people how to do things.  Tell them WHAT to do and
  they will surprise you with their ingenuity.
          -- Gen. George S. Patton, Jr.