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The Debian GNU/Linux FAQ

Chapter 7 - Basics of the Debian package
management system

This chapter touches on some lower level internals of Debian package management. If
you're interested mainly in usage of the relevant tools, skip to chapters The Debian package
management tools, Chapter 8 and/or Keeping your Debian system up-to-date, Chapter 9.

7.1 What is a Debian package?

Packages generally contain all of the files necessary to implement a set of related commands
or features. There are two types of Debian packages:

Binary packages, which contain executables, configuration files, man/info pages,

copyright information, and other documentation. These packages are distributed in a
Debian-specific archive format (see What is the format of a Debian binary package?,
Section 7.2); they are usually distinguished by having a '.deb' file extension. Binary
packages can be unpacked using the Debian utility dpkg (possibly via a frontend like
aptitude); details are given in its manual page.

Source packages, which consist of a .dsc file describing the source package (including
the names of the following files), a .orig.tar.gz file that contains the original
unmodified source in gzip-compressed tar format and usually a .diff.gz file that
contains the Debian-specific changes to the original source. The utility dpkg-source
packs and unpacks Debian source archives; details are provided in its manual page.
(The program apt-get can get used a frontend for dpkg-source.)

Installation of software by the package system uses "dependencies" which are carefully
designed by the package maintainers. These dependencies are documented in the control
file associated with each package. For example, the package containing the GNU C compiler
(gcc) "depends" on the package binutils which includes the linker and assembler. If a user
attempts to install gcc without having first installed binutils, the package management
system (dpkg) will send an error message that it also needs binutils, and stop installing gcc.
(However, this facility can be overridden by the insistent user, see dpkg(8).) See more in
What is meant by saying that a package Depends, Recommends, Suggests, Conflicts, Replaces,
Breaks or Provides another package?, Section 7.9 below.

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Debian's packaging tools can be used to:

manipulate and manage packages or parts of packages,

administer local overrides of files in a package,

aid developers in the construction of package archives, and

aid users in the installation of packages which reside on a remote FTP site.

7.2 What is the format of a Debian binary package?

A Debian "package", or a Debian archive file, contains the executable files, libraries, and
documentation associated with a particular suite of program or set of related programs.
Normally, a Debian archive file has a filename that ends in .deb.

The internals of this Debian binary packages format are described in the deb(5) manual
page. This internal format is subject to change (between major releases of Debian
GNU/Linux), therefore please always use dpkg-deb(1) if you need to do lowlevel
manipulations on .deb files.

7.3 Why are Debian package file names so long?

The Debian binary package file names conform to the following convention:
<foo>_<VersionNumber>-<DebianRevisionNumber>_<DebianArchitecture>.deb

Note that foo is supposed to be the package name. As a check, one can learn the package
name associated with a particular Debian archive file (.deb file) in one of these ways:

inspect the "Packages" file in the directory where it was stored at a Debian FTP archive
site. This file contains a stanza describing each package; the first field in each stanza is
the formal package name.

use the command dpkg --info foo_VVV-RRR_AAA.deb (where VVV, RRR and AAA are the
version, revision and architecture of the package in question, respectively). This
displays, among other things, the package name corresponding to the archive file
being unpacked.

The VVV component is the version number specified by the upstream developer. There are no
standards in place here, so the version number may have formats as different as "19990513"
and "1.3.8pre1".

The RRR component is the Debian revision number, and is specified by the Debian developer
(or an individual user if he chooses to build the package himself). This number corresponds
to the revision level of the Debian package, thus, a new revision level usually signifies
changes in the Debian Makefile (debian/rules), the Debian control file (debian/control), the
installation or removal scripts (debian/p*), or in the configuration files used with the

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package.

The AAA component identifies the processor for which the package was built. This is
commonly i386, which refers to chips compatible to Intel's 386 or later versions. For other
possibilities review Debian's FTP directory structure at What are all those directories at the
Debian FTP archives?, Section 6.7. For details, see the description of "Debian architecture" in
the manual page dpkg-architecture(1).

7.4 What is a Debian control file?

Specifics regarding the contents of a Debian control file are provided in the Debian Policy
Manual, section 5, see What other documentation exists on and for a Debian system?,
Section 12.1.

Briefly, a sample control file is shown below for the Debian package hello:

Package: hello
Priority: optional
Section: devel
Installed-Size: 45
Maintainer: Adam Heath <[email protected]>
Architecture: i386
Version: 1.3-16
Depends: libc6 (>= 2.1)
Description: The classic greeting, and a good example
The GNU hello program produces a familiar, friendly greeting. It
allows nonprogrammers to use a classic computer science tool which
would otherwise be unavailable to them.
.
Seriously, though: this is an example of how to do a Debian package.
It is the Debian version of the GNU Project's `hello world' program
(which is itself an example for the GNU Project).

The Package field gives the package name. This is the name by which the package can be
manipulated by the package tools, and usually similar to but not necessarily the same as the
first component string in the Debian archive file name.

The Version field gives both the upstream developer's version number and (in the last
component) the revision level of the Debian package of this program as explained in Why
are Debian package file names so long?, Section 7.3.

The Architecture field specifies the chip for which this particular binary was compiled.

The Depends field gives a list of packages that have to be installed in order to install this
package successfully.

The Installed-Size indicates how much disk space the installed package will consume. This is
intended to be used by installation front-ends in order to show whether there is enough disk
space available to install the program.

The Section line gives the "section" where this Debian package is stored at the Debian FTP

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sites.

The Priority indicates how important is this package for installation, so that semi-intelligent
software like dselect or aptitude can sort the package into a category of e.g. packages
optionally installed. See What is an Essential, Required, Important, Standard, Optional, or
Extra package?, Section 7.7.

The Maintainer field gives the e-mail address of the person who is currently responsible for
maintaining this package.

The Description field gives a brief summary of the package's features.

For more information about all possible fields a package can have, please see the Debian
Policy Manual, section 5, "Control files and their fields", see What other documentation
exists on and for a Debian system?, Section 12.1.

7.5 What is a Debian conffile?

Conffiles is a list of configuration files (usually placed in /etc) that the package management
system will not overwrite when the package is upgraded. This ensures that local values for
the contents of these files will be preserved, and is a critical feature enabling the in-place
upgrade of packages on a running system.

To determine exactly which files are preserved during an upgrade, run:

dpkg --status package

And look under "Conffiles:".

7.6 What is a Debian preinst, postinst, prerm, and postrm

script?
These files are executable scripts which are automatically run before or after a package is
installed. Along with a file named control, all of these files are part of the "control" section of
a Debian archive file.

The individual files are:

preinst

This script executes before that package will be unpacked from its Debian archive
(".deb") file. Many 'preinst' scripts stop services for packages which are being upgraded
until their installation or upgrade is completed (following the successful execution of
the 'postinst' script).

postinst

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This script typically completes any required configuration of the package foo once foo
has been unpacked from its Debian archive (".deb") file. Often, 'postinst' scripts ask the
user for input, and/or warn the user that if he accepts default values, he should
remember to go back and re-configure that package as the situation warrants. Many
'postinst' scripts then execute any commands necessary to start or restart a service
once a new package has been installed or upgraded.

prerm

This script typically stops any daemons which are associated with a package. It is
executed before the removal of files associated with the package.

postrm

This script typically modifies links or other files associated with foo, and/or removes
files created by the package. (Also see What is a Virtual Package?, Section 7.8.)

Currently all of the control files can be found in directory /var/lib/dpkg/info. The files
relevant to package foo begin with the name "foo" and have file extensions of "preinst",
"postinst", etc., as appropriate. The file foo.list in that directory lists all of the files that were
installed with the package foo. (Note that the location of these files is a dpkg internal; you
should not rely on it.)

7.7 What is an Essential, Required, Important, Standard,

Optional, or Extra package?
Each Debian package is assigned a priority by the distribution maintainers, as an aid to the
package management system. The priorities are:

Required: packages that are necessary for the proper functioning of the system.

This includes all tools that are necessary to repair system defects. You must not remove
these packages or your system may become totally broken and you may probably not
even be able to use dpkg to put things back. Systems with only the Required packages
are probably unusable, but they do have enough functionality to allow the sysadmin to
boot and install more software.

Important packages should be found on any Unix-like system.

Other packages which the system will not run well or be usable without will be here.
This does NOT include Emacs or X or TeX or any other large applications. These
packages only constitute the bare infrastructure.

Standard packages are standard on any Linux system, including a reasonably small
but not too limited character-mode system. Tools are included to be able to browse the
web (using w3m), send e-mail (with mutt) and download files from FTP servers.

This is what will install by default if users do not select anything else. It does not

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include many large applications, but it does include the Python interpreter and some
server software like OpenSSH (for remote administration), Exim (for mail delivery,
although it can be configured for local delivery only), an identd server (pidentd) and
the RPC portmapper (portmap). It also includes some common generic documentation
that most users will find helpful.

Optional packages include all those that you might reasonably want to install if you
did not know what it was, or do not have specialized requirements.

This includes X, a full TeX distribution, and lots of applications.

Extra: packages that either conflict with others with higher priorities, are only likely to
be useful if you already know what they are, or have specialized requirements that
make them unsuitable for "Optional".

If you do a default Debian installation all the packages of priority Standard or higher will
be installed in your system. If you select pre-defined tasks you will get lower priority
packages too.

Additionally, some packages are marked as Essential since they are absolutely necessary for
the proper functioning of the system. The package management tools will refuse to remove
these.

7.8 What is a Virtual Package?

A virtual package is a generic name that applies to any one of a group of packages, all of
which provide similar basic functionality. For example, both the tin and trn programs are
news readers, and should therefore satisfy any dependency of a program that required a
news reader on a system, in order to work or to be useful. They are therefore both said to
provide the "virtual package" called news-reader.

Similarly, smail and sendmail both provide the functionality of a mail transport agent. They
are therefore said to provide the virtual package, "mail transport agent". If either one is
installed, then any program depending on the installation of a mail-transport-agent will be
satisfied by the existence of this virtual package.

Debian provides a mechanism so that, if more than one package which provide the same
virtual package is installed on a system, then system administrators can set one as the
preferred package. The relevant command is update-alternatives, and is described further in
Some users like mawk, others like gawk; some like vim, others like elvis; some like trn,
others like tin; how does Debian support diversity?, Section 11.10.

7.9 What is meant by saying that a package Depends,

Recommends, Suggests, Conflicts, Replaces, Breaks or
Provides another package?

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The Debian package system has a range of package "dependencies" which are designed to
indicate (in a single flag) the level at which Program A can operate independently of the
existence of Program B on a given system:

Package A depends on Package B if B absolutely must be installed in order to run A. In

some cases, A depends not only on B, but on a version of B. In this case, the version
dependency is usually a lower limit, in the sense that A depends on any version of B
more recent than some specified version.

Package A recommends Package B, if the package maintainer judges that most users
would not want A without also having the functionality provided by B.

Package A suggests Package B if B contains files that are related to (and usually
enhance) the functionality of A.

Package A conflicts with Package B when A will not operate if B is installed on the
system. Most often, conflicts are cases where A contains files which are an
improvement over those in B. "Conflicts" are often combined with "replaces".

Package A replaces Package B when files installed by B are removed and (in some
cases) over-written by files in A.

Package A breaks Package B when both cannot packages cannot be simultaneously

configured in a system. The package management system will refuse to install one if
the other one is already installed and configured in the system.

Package A provides Package B when all of the files and functionality of B are
incorporated into A. This mechanism provides a way for users with constrained disk
space to get only that part of package A which they really need.

More detailed information on the use of each these terms can be found in the Debian Policy
manual, section 7.2, "Binary Dependencies", see What other documentation exists on and
for a Debian system?, Section 12.1.

7.10 What is meant by Pre-Depends?

"Pre-Depends" is a special dependency. In the case of most packages, dpkg will unpack its
archive file (i.e., its .deb file) independently of whether or not the files on which it depends
exist on the system. Simplistically, unpacking means that dpkg will extract the files from the
archive file that were meant to be installed on your file system, and put them in place. If
those packages depend on the existence of some other packages on your system, dpkg will
refuse to complete the installation (by executing its "configure" action) until the other
packages are installed.

However, for some packages, dpkg will refuse even to unpack them until certain
dependencies are resolved. Such packages are said to "Pre-depend" on the presence of some
other packages. The Debian project provided this mechanism to support the safe upgrading
of systems from a.out format to ELF format, where the order in which packages were

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unpacked was critical. There are other large upgrade situations where this method is useful,
e.g. the packages with the required priority and their LibC dependency.

As before, more detailed information about this can be found in the Policy manual.

7.11 What is meant by unknown, install, remove, purge

and hold in the package status?
These "want" flags tell what the user wanted to do with a package (as indicated either by the
user's actions in the "Select" section of dselect, or by the user's direct invocations of dpkg).

Their meanings are:

unknown - the user has never indicated whether he wants the package

install - the user wants the package installed or upgraded

remove - the user wants the package removed, but does not want to remove any
existing configuration files.

purge - the user wants the package to be removed completely, including its
configuration files.

hold - the user wants this package not to be processed, i.e., he wants to keep the
current version with the current status whatever that is.

7.12 How do I put a package on hold?

There are three ways of holding back packages, with dpkg, aptitude or with dselect.

With dpkg, you have to export the list of package selections, with:

dpkg --get-selections \* > selections.txt

Then edit the resulting file selections.txt, change the line containing the package you wish to
hold, e.g. libc6, from this:

libc6 install

to this:

libc6 hold

Save the file, and reload it into dpkg database with:

dpkg --set-selections < selections.txt

With aptitude, you can hold a package using

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aptitude hold package_name

and remove the hold with

aptitude unhold package_name

With dselect, you have to enter the [S]elect screen, find the package you wish to hold in its
present state, and press the `=' key (or `H'). The changes will go live immediately after you
exit the [S]elect screen.

7.13 How do I install a source package?

Debian source packages can't actually be "installed", they are just unpacked in whatever
directory you want to build the binary packages they produce.

Source packages are distributed on most of the same mirrors where you can obtain the
binary packages. If you set up your APT's sources.list(5) to include the appropriate "deb-src"
lines, you'll be able to easily download any source packages by running

apt-get source foo

To help you in actually building the source package, Debian source package provide the
so-called build-dependencies mechanism. This means that the source package maintainer
keeps a list of other packages that are required to build their package. To see how this is
useful, run

apt-get build-dep foo

before building the source.

7.14 How do I build binary packages from a source

package?
The preferred way to do this is by using various wrapper tools. We'll show how it's done
using the devscripts tools. Install this package if you haven't done so already.

Now, first get the source package:

apt-get source foo

and change to the source tree:

cd foo-*

Then install needed build-dependencies (if any):

sudo apt-get build-dep foo

Then create a dedicated version of your own build (so that you won't get confused later

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when Debian itself releases a new version)

dch -l local 'Blah blah blah'

And finally build your package

debuild -us -uc

If everything worked out fine, you should now be able to install your package by running

sudo dpkg -i ../*.deb

If you prefer to do things manually, and don't want to use devscripts, follow this procedure:

You will need all of foo_*.dsc, foo_*.tar.gz and foo_*.diff.gz to compile the source (note: there
is no .diff.gz for some packages that are native to Debian).

Once you have them (How do I install a source package?, Section 7.13), if you have the
dpkg-dev package installed, the following command:

dpkg-source -x foo_version-revision.dsc

will extract the package into a directory called foo-version.

If you want just to compile the package, you may cd into foo-version directory and issue the
command

dpkg-buildpackage -rfakeroot -b

to build the package (note that this also requires the fakeroot package), and then

dpkg -i ../foo_version-revision_arch.deb

to install the newly-built package(s).

7.15 How do I create Debian packages myself?

For a more detailed description on this, read the New Maintainers' Guide, available in the
maint-guide package, or at http://www.debian.org/doc/devel-manuals#maint-guide.

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The Debian GNU/Linux FAQ

version 5.0.2, 2 June 2013

Authors are listed at Debian FAQ Authors

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