aptitudeaptitude&VERSION;
Copyright 2004-2011 Daniel Burrows.
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aptitude8aptitudehigh-level interface to the package manageraptitudeoptionsautocleancleanforget-newkeep-allupdateaptitudeoptionsfull-upgradesafe-upgradepackagesaptitudeoptionsbuild-depbuild-dependschangelogdownloadforbid-versionholdinstallmarkautopurgereinstallremoveshowunholdunmarkautoversionspackagesaptitudeextract-cache-subsetoutput-directorypackagesaptitudeoptionssearchpatternsaptitudeoptionsadd-user-tagremove-user-tagtagpackagesaptitudeoptionswhywhy-notpatternspackageaptitude-S fname--autoclean-on-startup--clean-on-startup-i-uaptitudehelpDescription
&aptitude; is a text-based interface to the Debian GNU/Linux
package system.
It allows the user to view the list of packages and to
perform package management tasks such as installing,
upgrading, and removing packages. Actions may be performed
from a visual interface or from the command-line.
Command-line actions
The first argument which does not begin with a hyphen (-)
is considered to be an action that the program should
perform. If an action is not specified on the command-line,
&aptitude; will start up in visual mode.
The following actions are available:
install
Install one or more packages. The packages should be
listed after the install command; if a
package name contains a tilde character
(~) or a question mark
(?), it will be treated
as a search pattern and every package matching the pattern
will be installed (see the section Search
Patterns in the &aptitude; reference
manual).
To select a particular version of the package, append =version
to the package name: for instance, aptitude install
apt=0.3.1. Similarly, to select a
package from a particular archive, append /archive
to the package name: for instance, aptitude install
apt/experimental. You cannot specify both an archive and a version for a package.
Not every package listed on the command line has to be
installed; you can tell &aptitude; to do something
different with a package by appending an override
specifier to the name of the package. For
example, aptitude remove wesnoth+ will
install wesnoth, not remove it. The
following override specifiers are available:
package+
Install package.
package+M
Install package and
immediately mark it as automatically
installed (note that if nothing depends on
package, this will cause
it to be immediately removed).
package-
Remove package.
package_
Purge package: remove it
and all its associated configuration and data files.
package=
Place package on hold:
cancel any active installation, upgrade, or removal,
and prevent this package from being automatically
upgraded in the future.
package:
Keep package at its
current version: cancel any installation, removal,
or upgrade. Unlike hold (above) this
does not prevent automatic upgrades in the future.
package&M
Mark package as having
been automatically installed.
package&m
Mark package as having
been manually installed.
As a special case, install with no
arguments will act on any stored/pending actions.
Once you enter Y at the final
confirmation prompt, the
install command will
modify &aptitude;'s stored information about what
actions to perform. Therefore, if you issue (e.g.) the
command aptitude install foo
bar and then abort the installation
once &aptitude; has started downloading and installing
packages, you will need to run aptitude
remove foo bar to cancel that order.
remove, purge, hold, unhold, keep, reinstall
These commands are the same as
install, but apply the
named action to all packages given on the command line for
which it is not overridden. The
difference between hold and
keep is that hold
will cause a package to be ignored by future safe-upgrade
or full-upgrade
commands, while keep merely cancels any
scheduled actions on the package.
unhold will allow a package to be
upgraded by future safe-upgrade or
full-upgrade
commands, without otherwise altering its state.
For instance, aptitude remove
'~ndeity' will remove all packages
whose name contains deity.
markauto, unmarkauto
Mark packages as automatically installed or manually
installed, respectively. Packages are specified in
exactly the same way as for the install command.
For instance, aptitude markauto
'~slibs' will mark all packages in
the libs section as
having been automatically installed.
For more information on automatically installed
packages, see the section Managing Automatically
Installed Packages in the &aptitude;
reference manual.
build-depends, build-dep
Satisfy the build-dependencies of a package. Each package
name may be a source package, in which case the build
dependencies of that source package are installed;
otherwise, binary packages are found in the same way as
for the install command,
and the build-dependencies of the source packages that
build those binary packages are satisfied.
If the command-line parameter
--arch-only is present, only
architecture-dependent build dependencies (i.e., not
Build-Depends-Indep or
Build-Conflicts-Indep) will be
obeyed.
forbid-version
Forbid a package from being upgraded to a particular
version. This will prevent &aptitude; from
automatically upgrading to this version, but will
allow automatic upgrades to future versions. By
default, &aptitude; will select the version to which the
package would normally be upgraded; you may override
this selection by appending =version
to the package name: for instance, aptitude forbid-version
vim=1.2.3.broken-4.
This command is useful for avoiding broken versions of
packages without having to set and clear manual holds.
If you decide you really want the forbidden version
after all, aptitude install package will
remove the ban.
update
Updates the list of available packages from the &apt;
sources (this is equivalent to apt-get
update)
safe-upgrade
Upgrades installed packages to their most recent version.
Installed packages will not be removed unless they are
unused (see the section Managing Automatically Installed
Packages in the &aptitude; reference
manual). Packages which are not currently installed may
be installed to resolve dependencies unless the --no-new-installs
command-line option is supplied.
If no packages are listed on
the command line, &aptitude; will attempt to upgrade every
package that can be upgraded. Otherwise, &aptitude; will
attempt to upgrade only the packages which it is
instructed to upgrade. The
packages can be extended with
suffixes in the same manner as arguments to
aptitude install, so you can also give
additional instructions to &aptitude; here; for instance,
aptitude safe-upgrade bash dash- will
attempt to upgrade the bash
package and remove the dash
package.
It is sometimes necessary to remove one package in order
to upgrade another; this command is not able to upgrade
packages in such situations. Use the full-upgrade
command to upgrade as many packages as possible.
full-upgrade
Upgrades installed packages to their most recent version,
removing or installing packages as necessary. This
command is less conservative than safe-upgrade
and thus more likely to perform unwanted actions.
However, it is capable of upgrading packages that safe-upgrade
cannot upgrade.
If no packages are listed on
the command line, &aptitude; will attempt to upgrade every
package that can be upgraded. Otherwise, &aptitude; will
attempt to upgrade only the packages which it is
instructed to upgrade. The
packages can be extended with
suffixes in the same manner as arguments to
aptitude install, so you can also give
additional instructions to &aptitude; here; for instance,
aptitude full-upgrade bash dash- will
attempt to upgrade the bash
package and remove the dash
package.
This command was originally named
dist-upgrade for historical reasons,
and &aptitude; still recognizes
dist-upgrade as a synonym for
full-upgrade.
keep-all
Cancels all scheduled actions on all packages; any
packages whose sticky state indicates an installation,
removal, or upgrade will have this sticky state cleared.
forget-new
Forgets all internal information about what packages
are new (equivalent to pressing f when in visual
mode).
search
Searches for packages matching one of the patterns
supplied on the command line. All packages which
match any of the given patterns will be displayed; for
instance, aptitude search
'~N' edit will list all new packages and all packages whose name contains edit. For more information on
search patterns, see the section Search
Patterns in the &aptitude; reference
manual.
In the example above, aptitude search
'~N' edit has two arguments after
search and thus is searching for
two patterns:
~N and
edit. As described in
the search pattern
reference, a single pattern
composed of two sub-patterns separated by a space (such
as ~N edit) matches
only if both patterns match. Thus,
the command aptitude search '~N
edit' will only show
new packages whose name contains
edit.
Unless you pass the -F option, the output of
aptitude search will look something
like this:
i apt - Advanced front-end for dpkg
pi apt-build - frontend to apt to build, optimize and in
cp apt-file - APT package searching utility -- command-
ihA raptor-utils - Raptor RDF Parser utilities
Each search result is listed on a separate line. The
first character of each line indicates the current state
of the package: the most common states are
p, meaning that no trace of the package
exists on the system, c, meaning that
the package was deleted but its configuration files remain
on the system, i, meaning that the
package is installed, and v, meaning
that the package is virtual. The second character
indicates the stored action (if any; otherwise a blank
space is displayed) to be performed on the package, with
the most common actions being i,
meaning that the package will be installed,
d, meaning that the package will be
deleted, and p, meaning that the
package and its configuration files will be removed. If
the third character is A, the package
was automatically installed.
For a complete list of the possible state and action
flags, see the section Accessing Package
Information in the &aptitude; reference
guide. To customize the output of
search, see the command-line options
-F
and --sort.
show
Displays detailed information about one or more packages,
listed following the search command. If a package name
contains a tilde character
(~) or a question mark
(?), it will be treated
as a search pattern and all matching packages will be
displayed (see the section Search Patterns
in the &aptitude; reference manual).
If the verbosity level is 1 or greater (i.e., at least one -v
is present on the command-line), information about all
versions of the package is displayed. Otherwise, information about
the candidate version (the version
that aptitude install
would download) is displayed.
You can display information about a different version of
the package by appending
=version to
the package name; you can display the version from a
particular archive or release by appending
/archive or
/release to
the package name: for instance,
/unstable or /sid.
If either of these is present, then only the version you
request will be displayed, regardless of the verbosity
level.
If the verbosity level is 1 or greater, the package's
architecture, compressed size, filename, and md5sum fields
will be displayed. If the verbosity level is 2 or
greater, the select version or versions will be displayed
once for each archive in which they are found.
versions
Displays the versions of the packages listed on the
command-line.
$ aptitude versions wesnoth
p 1:1.4.5-1 100
p 1:1.6.5-1 unstable 500
p 1:1.7.14-1 experimental 1
Each version is listed on a separate line. The leftmost
three characters indicate the current state, planned state
(if any), and whether the package was automatically
installed; for more information on their meanings, see
the documentation of
aptitude search. To the right
of the version number you can find the releases from which
the version is available, and the pin priority of the
version.
If a package name contains a tilde character
(~) or a question mark
(?), it will be treated
as a search pattern and all matching
versions will be displayed (see the
section Search
Patterns in the &aptitude; reference
manual). This means that, for instance, aptitude
versions '~i' will display all the versions that
are currently installed on the system and nothing else,
not even other versions of the same packages.
$ aptitude versions '~nexim4-daemon-light'
Package exim4-daemon-light:
i 4.71-3 100
p 4.71-4 unstable 500
Package exim4-daemon-light-dbg:
p 4.71-4 unstable 500
If the input is a search pattern, or if more than one
package's versions are to be displayed, &aptitude; will
automatically group the output by package, as shown above.
You can disable this via --group-by=none,
in which case &aptitude; will display a single list of all
the versions that were found and automatically include the
package name in each output line:
$ aptitude versions --group-by=none '~nexim4-daemon-light'
i exim4-daemon-light 4.71-3 100
p exim4-daemon-light 4.71-4 unstable 500
p exim4-daemon-light-dbg 4.71-4 unstable 500
To disable the package name, pass
--show-package-names=never:
$ aptitude versions --show-package-names=never --group-by=none '~nexim4-daemon-light'
i 4.71-3 100
p 4.71-4 unstable 500
p 4.71-4 unstable 500
In addition to the above options, the information printed
for each version can be controlled by the command-line
option -F.
The order in which versions are displayed can be
controlled by the command-line option --sort.
To prevent &aptitude; from formatting the output into
columns, use --disable-columns.
add-user-tag, remove-user-tag
Adds a user tag to or removes a user tag from the selected
group of packages. If a package name contains a tilde
(~) or question mark
(?), it is treated as a
search pattern and the tag is added to or removed from all
the packages that match the pattern (see the section
Search
Patterns in the &aptitude; reference
manual).
User tags are arbitrary strings associated with a package.
They can be used with the ?user-tag(tag)
search term, which will select all the packages that have
a user tag matching tag.
why, why-not
Explains the reason that a particular package should or
cannot be installed on the system.
This command searches for packages that require or
conflict with the given package. It displays a sequence
of dependencies leading to the target package, along with
a note indicating the installed state of each package in
the dependency chain:
$ aptitude why kdepim
i nautilus-data Recommends nautilus
i A nautilus Recommends desktop-base (>= 0.2)
i A desktop-base Suggests gnome | kde | xfce4 | wmaker
p kde Depends kdepim (>= 4:3.4.3)
The command why finds a dependency
chain that installs the package named on the command line,
as above. Note that the dependency that &aptitude; produced
in this case is only a suggestion. This is because no
package currently installed on this computer depends on or
recommends the kdepim package; if
a stronger dependency were available, &aptitude; would have
displayed it.
In contrast, why-not finds a
dependency chain leading to a conflict
with the target package:
$ aptitude why-not textopo
i ocaml-core Depends ocamlweb
i A ocamlweb Depends tetex-extra | texlive-latex-extra
i A texlive-latex-extra Conflicts textopo
If one or more patterns are
present, then &aptitude; will begin its search at these
patterns; that is, the first package in the chain it
prints will be a package matching the pattern in question.
The patterns are considered to be package names unless
they contain a tilde character
(~) or a question mark
(?), in which case they
are treated as search patterns (see the section
Search
Patterns in the &aptitude; reference
manual).
If no patterns are present, then &aptitude; will search
for dependency chains beginning at manually installed
packages. This effectively shows the packages that have
caused or would cause a given package to be installed.
aptitude why does not perform full
dependency resolution; it only displays direct
relationships between packages. For instance, if A
requires B, C requires D, and B and C conflict,
aptitude why-not D
will not produce the answer A depends on B, B
conflicts with C, and D depends on C.
By default &aptitude; outputs only the most
installed, strongest, tightest, shortest
dependency chain. That is, it looks for a chain that only
contains packages which are installed or will be
installed; it looks for the strongest possible
dependencies under that restriction; it looks for chains
that avoid ORed dependencies and Provides; and it looks
for the shortest dependency chain meeting those criteria.
These rules are progressively weakened until a match is
found.
If the verbosity level is 1 or more, then
all the explanations &aptitude; can
find will be displayed, in inverse order of relevance. If
the verbosity level is 2 or more, a truly excessive amount
of debugging information will be printed to standard
output.
This command returns 0 if successful, 1 if no explanation
could be constructed, and -1 if an error occurred.
clean
Removes all previously downloaded .deb files from the package cache
directory (usually /var/cache/apt/archives).
autoclean
Removes any cached packages which can no longer be
downloaded. This allows you to prevent a cache from
growing out of control over time without completely
emptying it.
changelog
Downloads and displays the Debian changelog for each of
the given source or binary packages.
By default, the changelog for the version which would be
installed with aptitude
install is downloaded. You can select a
particular version of a package by appending
=version to
the package name; you can select the version from a
particular archive or release by appending
/archive or
/release to
the package name (for instance,
/unstable or /sid).
download
Downloads the .deb file for the given
package to the current directory. If a package name
contains a tilde character
(~) or a question mark
(?), it will be treated
as a search pattern and all the matching packages will be
downloaded (see the section Search Patterns
in the &aptitude; reference manual).
By default, the version which would be installed with
aptitude install is
downloaded. You can select a particular version of a
package by appending
=version to
the package name; you can select the version from a
particular archive or release by appending
/archive or
/release to
the package name (for instance:
/unstable or /sid).
extract-cache-subset
Copy the &apt; configuration directory
(/etc/apt) and a subset of the package
database to the specified directory. If no packages are
listed, the entire package database is copied; otherwise
only the entries corresponding to the named packages are
copied. Each package name may be a search pattern, and
all the packages matching that pattern will be selected
(see the section Search Patterns
in the &aptitude; reference manual). Any existing package
database files in the output directory will be
overwritten.
Dependencies in binary package stanzas will be rewritten
to remove references to packages not in the selected set.
help
Displays a brief summary of the available commands and
options.
Options
The following options may be used to modify the behavior of
the actions described above. Note that while all options
will be accepted for all commands, some options don't apply
to particular commands and will be ignored by those
commands.
--add-user-tag tag
For full-upgrade,
safe-upgrade,
forbid-version,
hold, install,
keep-all, markauto,
unmarkauto, purge,
reinstall, remove,
unhold, and
unmarkauto: add the user tag
tag to all packages that are
installed, removed, or upgraded by this command as if with
the add-user-tag
command.
--add-user-tag-to tag,pattern
For full-upgrade, safe-upgradeforbid-version,
hold, install,
keep-all, markauto,
unmarkauto, purge,
reinstall, remove,
unhold, and
unmarkauto: add the user tag
tag to all packages that match
pattern as if with the add-user-tag
command. The pattern is a search pattern as described in
the section Search Patterns
in the &aptitude; reference manual.
For instance, aptitude safe-upgrade
--add-user-tag-to "new-installs,?action(install)"
will add the tag new-installs to all
the packages installed by the safe-upgrade
command.
--allow-new-upgrades
When the safe resolver is being used (i.e., --safe-resolver
was passed, the action is safe-upgrade,
or Aptitude::Always-Use-Safe-Resolver
is set to true), allow the dependency
resolver to install upgrades for packages regardless of
the value of Aptitude::Safe-Resolver::No-New-Upgrades.
--allow-new-installs
Allow the safe-upgrade
command to install new packages; when the safe resolver is
being used (i.e., --safe-resolver
was passed, the action is safe-upgrade,
or Aptitude::Always-Use-Safe-Resolver
is set to true), allow the dependency
resolver to install new packages. This option takes
effect regardless of the value of Aptitude::Safe-Resolver::No-New-Installs.
--allow-untrusted
Install packages from untrusted sources without prompting.
You should only use this if you know what you are doing,
as it could easily compromise your system's security.
--disable-columns
This option causes aptitude search and
aptitude versions to
output their results without any special formatting. In
particular: normally &aptitude; will add whitespace or
truncate search results in an attempt to fit its results
into vertical columns. With this flag,
each line will be formed by replacing any format escapes
in the format string with the corresponding text; column
widths will be ignored.
For instance, the first few lines of output from aptitude search -F '%p %V' --disable-columns libedataserver might be:
disksearch 1.2.1-3
hp-search-mac 0.1.3
libbsearch-ruby 1.5-5
libbsearch-ruby1.8 1.5-5
libclass-dbi-abstractsearch-perl 0.07-2
libdbix-fulltextsearch-perl 0.73-10
As in the above example,
--disable-columns is often useful in
combination with a custom display format set using the
command-line option -F.
This corresponds to the configuration option
Aptitude::CmdLine::Disable-Columns.
-D, --show-deps
For commands that will install or remove packages
(install, full-upgrade,
etc), show brief explanations of automatic installations
and removals.
This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::CmdLine::Show-Deps.
-d, --download-only
Download packages to the package cache as necessary, but
do not install or remove anything. By default, the
package cache is stored in
/var/cache/apt/archives.
This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::CmdLine::Download-Only.
-Fformat, --display-formatformat
Specify the format which should be used to display
output from the search and
versions commands.
For instance, passing %p %V %v
for format will display a package's name,
followed by its currently installed version and its
available version (see the section Customizing how packages are displayed in the &aptitude; reference manual for more information).
The command-line option --disable-columns
is often useful in combination with -F.
For search, this corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::CmdLine::Package-Display-Format;
for versions, this corresponds to the
configuration option Aptitude::CmdLine::Version-Display-Format.
-f
Try hard to fix the dependencies of broken packages, even
if it means ignoring the actions requested on the command
line.
This corresponds to the configuration item Aptitude::CmdLine::Fix-Broken.
--full-resolver
When package dependency problems are encountered, use the
default full resolver to solve them.
Unlike the safe resolver activated by --safe-resolver,
the full resolver will happily remove packages to fulfill
dependencies. It can resolve more situations than the
safe algorithm, but its solutions are more likely to be
undesirable.
This option can be used to force the use of the full
resolver even when Aptitude::Always-Use-Safe-Resolver
is true. The safe-upgrade
command never uses the full resolver and does not accept
the --full-resolver option.
--group-bygrouping-mode
Control how the versions
command groups its output. The following values are
recognized:
archive to group packages by the
archive they occur in
(stable,
unstable, etc). If
a package occurs in several archives, it will be
displayed in each of them.
auto to group versions by their
package unless there is exactly one argument and it is
not a search pattern.
none to display all the versions in
a single list without any grouping.
package to group versions by their
package.
source-package to group versions by
their source package.
source-version to group versions by
their source package and source version.
This corresponds to the configuration option
Aptitude::CmdLine::Versions-Group-By.
-h, --help
Display a brief help message. Identical to the help action.
--log-file=file
If file is a nonempty string,
log messages will be written to it, except that if
file is
-, the messages will be
written to standard output instead. If this option
appears multiple times, the last occurrence is the one
that will take effect.
This does not affect the log of installations that
&aptitude; has performed
(/var/log/aptitude); the log messages
written using this configuration include internal program
events, errors, and debugging messages. See the
command-line option --log-level
to get more control over what gets logged.
This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::Logging::File.
--log-level=level, --log-level=category:level--log-level=level
causes &aptitude; to only log messages whose level is
level or higher. For instance,
setting the log level to error will
cause only messages at the log levels
error and fatal to
be displayed; all others will be hidden. Valid log levels
(in descending order) are off,
fatal, error,
warn, info,
debug, and trace.
The default log level is warn.
--log-level=category:level
causes messages in category to
only be logged if their level is
level or higher.
--log-level may appear multiple times
on the command line; the most specific setting is the one
that takes effect, so if you pass
--log-level=aptitude.resolver:fatal and
--log-level=aptitude.resolver.hints.match:trace,
then messages in
aptitude.resolver.hints.parse will only
be printed if their level is fatal, but
all messages in
aptitude.resolver.hints.match will be
printed. If you set the level of the same category two or
more times, the last setting is the one that will take
effect.
This does not affect the log of installations that
&aptitude; has performed
(/var/log/aptitude); the log messages
written using this configuration include internal program
events, errors, and debugging messages. See the
command-line option --log-file
to change where log messages go.
This corresponds to the configuration group Aptitude::Logging::Levels.
--log-resolver
Set some standard log levels related to the resolver, to
produce logging output suitable for processing with
automated tools. This is equivalent to the command-line
options
--log-level=aptitude.resolver.search:trace
--log-level=aptitude.resolver.search.tiers:info.
--no-new-installs
Prevent safe-upgrade
from installing any new packages; when the safe resolver
is being used (i.e., --safe-resolver
was passed or Aptitude::Always-Use-Safe-Resolver
is set to true), forbid the dependency
resolver from installing new packages. This option takes
effect regardless of the value of Aptitude::Safe-Resolver::No-New-Installs.
This mimics the historical behavior of apt-get
upgrade.
--no-new-upgrades
When the safe resolver is being used (i.e., --safe-resolver
was passed or Aptitude::Always-Use-Safe-Resolver
is set to true), forbid the dependency
resolver from installing upgrades for packages
regardless of the value of Aptitude::Safe-Resolver::No-New-Upgrades.
--no-show-resolver-actions
Do not display the actions performed by the
safe resolver, overriding any configuration
option or earlier
--show-resolver-actions.
-Oorder, --sortorder
Specify the order in which output from the search and versions
commands should be displayed. For instance, passing installsize
for order will list packages in
order according to their size when installed (see the section Customizing how packages are sorted in the &aptitude; reference manual for more information).
The default sort order is name,version.
-okey=value
Set a configuration file option directly; for
instance, use -o
Aptitude::Log=/tmp/my-log to log &aptitude;'s
actions to /tmp/my-log. For more
information on configuration file options, see the
section Configuration file
reference in the &aptitude; reference manual.
-P, --prompt
Always display a prompt before downloading, installing or
removing packages, even when no actions other than those
explicitly requested will be performed.
This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::CmdLine::Always-Prompt.
--purge-unused
If Aptitude::Delete-Unused
is set to true (its
default), then in addition to removing each package that
is no longer required by any installed package, &aptitude;
will also purge them, removing their configuration files
and perhaps other important data. For more information
about which packages are considered to be
unused, see the section Managing Automatically Installed
Packages in the &aptitude; reference
manual. THIS OPTION CAN CAUSE DATA LOSS! DO
NOT USE IT UNLESS YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE DOING!
This corresponds to the configuration option
Aptitude::Purge-Unused.
-q=n, --quiet=n
Suppress all incremental progress indicators, thus making
the output loggable. This may be supplied multiple times
to make the program quieter, but unlike &apt-get;,
&aptitude; does not enable -y when -q
is supplied more than once.
The optional =n
may be used to directly set the amount of quietness (for
instance, to override a setting in /etc/apt/apt.conf);
it causes the program to behave as if -q
had been passed exactly n
times.
-R, --without-recommends
Do not treat recommendations as
dependencies when installing new packages (this overrides settings in /etc/apt/apt.conf and ~/.aptitude/config).
Packages previously installed due to recommendations
will not be removed.
This corresponds to the pair of configuration options Apt::Install-Recommends and Apt::AutoRemove::InstallRecommends.
-r, --with-recommends
Treat recommendations as dependencies when installing
new packages (this overrides settings in /etc/apt/apt.conf and ~/.aptitude/config).
This corresponds to the configuration option Apt::Install-Recommends--remove-user-tag tag
For full-upgrade,
safe-upgradeforbid-version,
hold, install,
keep-all, markauto,
unmarkauto, purge,
reinstall, remove,
unhold, and
unmarkauto: remove the user tag
tag from all packages that are
installed, removed, or upgraded by this command as if with
the add-user-tag
command.
--remove-user-tag-from tag,pattern
For full-upgrade,
safe-upgradeforbid-version,
hold, install,
keep-all, markauto,
unmarkauto, purge,
reinstall, remove,
unhold, and
unmarkauto: remove the user tag
tag from all packages that
match pattern as if with the
remove-user-tag
command. The pattern is a search pattern as described in
the section Search Patterns
in the &aptitude; reference manual.
For instance, aptitude safe-upgrade
--remove-user-tag-from
"not-upgraded,?action(upgrade)" will remove the
not-upgraded tag from all packages that
the safe-upgrade
command is able to upgrade.
-s, --simulate
In command-line mode, print the actions that would
normally be performed, but don't actually perform them.
This does not require &root; privileges. In the visual
interface, always open the cache in read-only mode
regardless of whether you are &root;.
This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::Simulate.
--safe-resolver
When package dependency problems are encountered, use a
safe algorithm to solve them. This
resolver attempts to preserve as many of your choices as
possible; it will never remove a package or install a
version of a package other than the package's default
candidate version. It is the same algorithm used in safe-upgrade;
indeed, aptitude --safe-resolver
full-upgrade is equivalent to aptitude
safe-upgrade. Because
safe-upgrade always uses the safe
resolver, it does not accept the
--safe-resolver flag.
This option is equivalent to setting the configuration
variable Aptitude::Always-Use-Safe-Resolver
to true.
--schedule-only
For commands that modify package states, schedule
operations to be performed in the future, but don't
perform them. You can execute scheduled actions by
running aptitude install with no
arguments. This is equivalent to making the corresponding
selections in visual
mode, then exiting the program normally.
For instance, aptitude --schedule-only install
evolution will schedule the
evolution package for later
installation.
--show-package-nameswhen
Controls when the versions
command shows package names. The following settings are
allowed:
always: display package names every
time that aptitude versions runs.
auto: display package names when
aptitude versions runs if the
output is not grouped by package, and either there is
a pattern-matching argument or there is more than one
argument.
never: never display package names
in the output of aptitude versions.
This option corresponds to the configuration item Aptitude::CmdLine::Versions-Show-Package-Names.
--show-resolver-actions
Display the actions performed by the safe
resolver and by safe-upgrade.
When executing the command safe-upgrade
or when the option --safe-resolver is
present, &aptitude; will display a summary of the actions
performed by the resolver before printing the installation
preview. This is equivalent to the configuration option Aptitude::Safe-Resolver::Show-Resolver-Actions.
--show-summary=MODE
Changes the behavior of aptitude
why to summarize each dependency chain
that it outputs, rather than displaying it in long form.
If this option is present and
MODE is not
no-summary, chains that
contain Suggests dependencies will not be displayed:
combine --show-summary with
-v to see a summary of all the reasons
for the target package to be installed.
MODE can be any one of the
following:
no-summary: don't show a summary
(the default behavior if
--show-summary is not present).
first-package: display the first
package in each chain. This is the default value of
MODE if it is not present.
first-package-and-type: display the
first package in each chain, along with the strength
of the weakest dependency in the chain.
all-packages: briefly display each
chain of dependencies leading to the target package.
all-packages-with-dep-versions:
briefly display each chain of dependencies leading to
the target package, including the target version of
each dependency.
This option corresponds to the configuration item Aptitude::CmdLine::Show-Summary;
if --show-summary is present on the
command-line, it will override Aptitude::CmdLine::Show-Summary.
Usage of --show-summary--show-summary used with
-v to display all the reasons a
package is installed:
$ aptitude -v --show-summary why foomatic-db
Packages requiring foomatic-db:
cupsys-driver-gutenprint
foomatic-db-engine
foomatic-db-gutenprint
foomatic-db-hpijs
foomatic-filters-ppds
foomatic-gui
kde
printconf
wine
$ aptitude -v --show-summary=first-package-and-type why foomatic-db
Packages requiring foomatic-db:
[Depends] cupsys-driver-gutenprint
[Depends] foomatic-db-engine
[Depends] foomatic-db-gutenprint
[Depends] foomatic-db-hpijs
[Depends] foomatic-filters-ppds
[Depends] foomatic-gui
[Depends] kde
[Depends] printconf
[Depends] wine
$ aptitude -v --show-summary=all-packages why foomatic-db
Packages requiring foomatic-db:
cupsys-driver-gutenprint D: cups-driver-gutenprint D: cups R: foomatic-filters R: foomatic-db-engine D: foomatic-db
foomatic-filters-ppds D: foomatic-filters R: foomatic-db-engine D: foomatic-db
kde D: kdeadmin R: system-config-printer-kde D: system-config-printer R: hal-cups-utils D: cups R: foomatic-filters R: foomatic-db-engine D: foomatic-db
wine D: libwine-print D: cups-bsd R: cups R: foomatic-filters R: foomatic-db-engine D: foomatic-db
foomatic-db-engine D: foomatic-db
foomatic-db-gutenprint D: foomatic-db
foomatic-db-hpijs D: foomatic-db
foomatic-gui D: python-foomatic D: foomatic-db-engine D: foomatic-db
printconf D: foomatic-db
$ aptitude -v --show-summary=all-packages-with-dep-versions why foomatic-db
Packages requiring foomatic-db:
cupsys-driver-gutenprint D: cups-driver-gutenprint (>= 5.0.2-4) D: cups (>= 1.3.0) R: foomatic-filters (>= 4.0) R: foomatic-db-engine (>= 4.0) D: foomatic-db (>= 20090301)
foomatic-filters-ppds D: foomatic-filters R: foomatic-db-engine (>= 4.0) D: foomatic-db (>= 20090301)
kde D: kdeadmin (>= 4:3.5.5) R: system-config-printer-kde (>= 4:4.2.2-1) D: system-config-printer (>= 1.0.0) R: hal-cups-utils D: cups R: foomatic-filters (>= 4.0) R: foomatic-db-engine (>= 4.0) D: foomatic-db (>= 20090301)
wine D: libwine-print (= 1.1.15-1) D: cups-bsd R: cups R: foomatic-filters (>= 4.0) R: foomatic-db-engine (>= 4.0) D: foomatic-db (>= 20090301)
foomatic-db-engine D: foomatic-db
foomatic-db-gutenprint D: foomatic-db
foomatic-db-hpijs D: foomatic-db
foomatic-gui D: python-foomatic (>= 0.7.9.2) D: foomatic-db-engine D: foomatic-db (>= 20090301)
printconf D: foomatic-db
--show-summary used to list a chain on one line:
$ aptitude --show-summary=all-packages why aptitude-gtk libglib2.0-data
Packages requiring libglib2.0-data:
aptitude-gtk D: libglib2.0-0 R: libglib2.0-data-trelease, --target-releaserelease
Set the release from which packages should be
installed. For instance, aptitude -t
experimental ... will install
packages from the experimental distribution unless you
specify otherwise. For the command-line actions changelog, download, and show,
this is equivalent to appending /release
to each package named on the command-line; for other commands,
this will affect the default candidate version of packages
according to the rules described in apt_preferences5.
This corresponds to the configuration item APT::Default-Release.
-V, --show-versions
Show which versions of packages will be installed.
This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::CmdLine::Show-Versions.
-v, --verbose
Causes some commands (for instance, show) to display extra information. This may be supplied multiple times to get more and more information.
This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::CmdLine::Verbose.
--version
Display the version of &aptitude; and some information
about how it was compiled.
--visual-preview
When installing or removing packages from the command
line, instead of displaying the usual prompt, start up the
visual interface and display its preview screen.
-W, --show-why
In the preview displayed before packages are installed or
removed, show which manually installed package requires
each automatically installed package. For instance:
$ aptitude --show-why install mediawiki
...
The following NEW packages will be installed:
libapache2-mod-php5{a} (for mediawiki) mediawiki php5{a} (for mediawiki)
php5-cli{a} (for mediawiki) php5-common{a} (for mediawiki)
php5-mysql{a} (for mediawiki)
When combined with -v or a non-zero
value for Aptitude::CmdLine::Verbose,
this displays the entire chain of dependencies that lead
each package to be installed. For instance:
$ aptitude -v --show-why install libdb4.2-dev
The following NEW packages will be installed:
libdb4.2{a} (libdb4.2-dev D: libdb4.2) libdb4.2-dev
The following packages will be REMOVED:
libdb4.4-dev{a} (libdb4.2-dev C: libdb-dev P<- libdb-dev)
This option will also describe why packages are being
removed, as shown above. In this example,
libdb4.2-dev conflicts with
libdb-dev, which is provided by
libdb-dev.
This argument corresponds to the configuration option
Aptitude::CmdLine::Show-Why
and displays the same information that is computed by
aptitude why and aptitude
why-not.
-wwidth, --widthwidth
Specify the display width which should be used for
output from the search command (by
default, the terminal width is used).
This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::CmdLine::Package-Display-Width-y, --assume-yes
When a yes/no prompt would be presented, assume that
the user entered yes. In particular,
suppresses the prompt that appears when installing,
upgrading, or removing packages. Prompts for dangerous actions, such as removing
essential packages, will still be displayed. This
option overrides -P.
This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::CmdLine::Assume-Yes.
-Z
Show how much disk space will be used or freed by the
individual packages being installed, upgraded, or
removed.
This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::CmdLine::Show-Size-Changes.
The following options apply to the visual mode of the
program, but are primarily for internal use; you generally
won't need to use them yourself.
--autoclean-on-startup
Deletes old downloaded files when the program starts
(equivalent to starting the program and immediately
selecting
ActionsClean
obsolete files). You cannot
use this option and
--autoclean-on-startup,
-i, or
-u at the same time.
--clean-on-startup
Cleans the package cache when the program starts
(equivalent to starting the program and immediately
selecting
ActionsClean
package cache). You cannot use
this option and
--autoclean-on-startup,
-i, or
-u at the same time.
-i
Displays a download preview when the program starts
(equivalent to starting the program and immediately
pressing g). You cannot
use this option and
--autoclean-on-startup,
--clean-on-startup, or
-u at the same time.
-Sfname
Loads the extended state information from fname instead of the
standard state file.
-u
Begins updating the package lists as soon as the program
starts. You cannot use this option and
--autoclean-on-startup,
--clean-on-startup, or
-i at the same time.
EnvironmentHOME
If $HOME/.aptitude exists, &aptitude; will store
its configuration file in $HOME/.aptitude/config.
Otherwise, it will look up the current user's home directory
using getpwuid2
and place its configuration file there.
PAGER
If this environment variable is set, &aptitude; will use it
to display changelogs when aptitude
changelog is invoked. If not set, it
defaults to more.
TMP
If TMPDIR is unset, &aptitude; will store
its temporary files in TMP if that
variable is set. Otherwise, it will store them in
/tmp.
TMPDIR
&aptitude; will store its temporary files in the directory
indicated by this environment variable. If
TMPDIR is not set, then
TMP will be used; if
TMP is also unset, then &aptitude; will
use /tmp.
Files/var/lib/aptitude/pkgstates
The file in which stored package states and some package
flags are stored.
/etc/apt/apt.conf,
/etc/apt/apt.conf.d/*,
~/.aptitude/config
The configuration files for &aptitude;.
~/.aptitude/config overrides
/etc/apt/apt.conf. See
apt.conf5
for documentation of the format and contents of these
files.
See alsoapt-get8, apt8, /usr/share/doc/aptitude/html/lang/index.html from the package aptitude-doc-langaptitude-create-state-bundleaptitude-create-state-bundle&VERSION;
Copyright 2007 Daniel Burrows.
This manual page is free software; you can redistribute it
and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public
License as published by the Free Software Foundation;
either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any
later version.
This manual page is distributed in the hope that it will
be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the
implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License
for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public
License along with this program; if not, write to the Free
Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.
aptitude-create-state-bundle1aptitude-create-state-bundlebundle the current aptitude stateaptitude-create-state-bundleoptionsoutput-fileDescriptionaptitude-create-state-bundle produces a
compressed archive storing the files that are required to
replicate the current package archive state. The following
files and directories are included in the bundle:
$HOME/.aptitude/var/lib/aptitude/var/lib/apt/var/cache/apt/*.bin/etc/apt/var/lib/dpkg/status
The output of this program can be used as an argument to aptitude-run-state-bundle1.
Options--force-bzip2
Override the autodetection of which compression algorithm
to use. By default,
aptitude-create-state-bundle uses
bzip21
if it is available, and
gzip1
otherwise. Passing this option forces the use of
bzip2 even if it doesn't appear to be
available.
--force-gzip
Override the autodetection of which compression algorithm
to use. By default,
aptitude-create-state-bundle uses
bzip21
if it is available, and
gzip1
otherwise. Passing this option forces the use of
gzip even if bzip2
is available.
--help
Print a brief usage message, then exit.
--print-inputs
Instead of creating a bundle, display a list of the files
and directories that the program would include if it
generated a bundle.
File format
The bundle file is simply a
tar1
file compressed with
bzip21
or
gzip1,
with each of the input directory trees rooted at
..
See alsoaptitude-run-state-bundle1, aptitude8, apt8aptitude-run-state-bundleaptitude-run-state-bundle&VERSION;
Copyright 2007 Daniel Burrows.
This manual page is free software; you can redistribute it
and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public
License as published by the Free Software Foundation;
either version 2 of the License, or (at your option) any
later version.
This manual page is distributed in the hope that it will
be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the
implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A
PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU General Public License
for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public
License along with this program; if not, write to the Free
Software Foundation, Inc., 51 Franklin Street, Fifth Floor,
Boston, MA 02110-1301 USA.
aptitude-run-state-bundle1aptitude-run-state-bundleunpack an aptitude state bundle and invoke aptitude on itaptitude-run-state-bundleoptionsinput-fileprogramargumentsDescriptionaptitude-run-state-bundle unpacks the given
aptitude state bundle created by
aptitude-create-state-bundle1
to a temporary directory, invokes
program on it with the supplied
arguments, and removes the temporary
directory afterwards. If program is
not supplied, it defaults to
aptitude8.
Options
The following options may occur on the command-line before the
input file. Options following the input file are presumed to be
arguments to &aptitude;.
--append-args
Place the options that give the location of the state
bundle at the end of the command line when invoking
program, rather than at the
beginning (the default is to place options at the
beginning).
--help
Display a brief usage summary.
--prepend-args
Place the options that give the location of the state
bundle at the beginning of the command line when invoking
program, overriding any
previous --append-args (the default is
to place options at the beginning).
--no-clean
Do not remove the unpacked state directory after running
aptitude. You might want to use this
if, for instance, you are debugging a problem that appears
when &aptitude;'s state file is modified. When
aptitude finishes running, the name of
the state directory will be printed so that you can access
it in the future.
This option is enabled automatically by
--statedir.
--really-clean
Delete the state directory after running
aptitude, even if
--no-clean or
--statedir was supplied.
--statedir
Instead of treating the input file as a state bundle,
treat it as an unpacked state bundle. For instance, you
can use this to access the state directory that was
created by a prior run with --no-clean.
--unpack
Unpack the input file to a temporary directory, but don't
actually run aptitude.
See alsoaptitude-create-state-bundle1,
aptitude8,
apt8