Re: O/S upgrade - dpkg still shows old version for some packages

[Abdullah Ramazanoğlu <ar018@yahoo.com>]

On Tue, 22 May 2018 11:33:40 +0000 John Horne said:
> On Mon, 2018-05-21 at 20:50 +0300, Abdullah Ramazanoğlu wrote:

>> ~$ apt-cache policy nodejs
>>
>> might give a more complete view.
>  
> the output for this shows:
> 
> ======
> nodejs:
>   Installed: 4.8.2~dfsg-1
>   Candidate: 4.8.2~dfsg-1
>   Version table:
>  *** 4.8.2~dfsg-1 500
>         500 http://http.debian.net/debian stretch/main amd64 Packages
>         100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
> ======
> 
> I also tried 'dpkg -s' as you suggested. The output was:
> 
> ======
> Package: nodejs
> Status: install ok installed
> Priority: optional
> Section: web
> Installed-Size: 13928
> Maintainer: Debian Javascript Maintainers
> <pkg-javascript-devel@lists.alioth.de bian.org>  
> Architecture: amd64
> Version: 4.8.2~dfsg-1
> ...
> ======

So there is no problem.

dpkg -p is shows the available packages for dselect. Since apt and dselect uses
different mechanisms for tracking package status, dselect's availability
database (/var/lib/dpkg/available) is not getting updated, hence reflects
initial installation status.

You can update this database with "dpkg --update-avail" but since you won't be
using dselect anyway, it is futile to do so.

So I would suggest use "dpkg -s" for actual installed package status, and
forget about dselect's idea of available packages (dpkg -p).

More information can be found in dpkg(1) man page.

Regards
-- 
Abdullah Ramazanoğlu