man aptitude Command

Man page for apt-get aptitude Command

Man Page for aptitude in Linux

This tutorial shows the man page for man aptitude in linux.

Open terminal with 'su' access and type the command as shown below:
man aptitude

Result of the Command Execution shown below:

APTITUDE(8)                                                            Command Line Reference                                                            APTITUDE(8)



NAME
       aptitude   high level interface to the package manager

SYNOPSIS
       aptitude [...] {autoclean | clean | forget new | keep all | update | safe upgrade}

       aptitude [...] {changelog | full upgrade | download | forbid version | hold | install | markauto | purge | reinstall | remove | show | unhold |
                unmarkauto | build dep | build depends} ...

       aptitude extract cache subset 
 ...

       aptitude [...] search ...

       aptitude [...] {add user tag | remove user tag}  ...

       aptitude [...] {why | why not} [...] 

       aptitude [ S ] [ u |  i]

       aptitude help

DESCRIPTION
       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 "=" to the package name: for instance, "aptitude install apt=0.3.1". Similarly, to select
           a package from a particular archive, append "/" to the package name: for instance, "aptitude install apt/experimental".

           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:

           +
               Install .

           +M
               Install  and immediately mark it as automatically installed (note that if nothing depends on , this will cause it to be immediately
               removed).

            
               Remove .

           _
               Purge : remove it and all its associated configuration and data files.

           =
               Place  on hold: cancel any active installation, upgrade, or removal, and prevent this package from being automatically upgraded in the
               future.

           :
               Keep  at its current version: cancel any installation, removal, or upgrade. Unlike "hold" (above) this does not prevent automatic upgrades
               in the future.

           &M
               Mark  as having been automatically installed.

           &m
               Mark  as having been manually installed.

           As a special case, "install" with no arguments will act on any stored/pending actions.

               Note
               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 "=" 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, the "install" command 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.

           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.

               Note
               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.

           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 = to the package name; you can display the version from a
           particular archive by appending / to the package name. 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.

       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() search term, which will select all the packages
           that have a user tag matching .

       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 s 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.

               Note
               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 occured.

       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 = to the package name; you can select the version from a particular archive by appending / to the package name.

       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
           = to the package name; you can select the version from a particular archive by appending / to the package name.

       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 
           For full upgrade, safe upgrade, forbid version, hold, install, keep all, markauto, unmarkauto, purge, reinstall, remove, unhold, and unmarkauto: add the
           user 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 ,
           For full upgrade, safe upgrade forbid version, hold, install, keep all, markauto, unmarkauto, purge, reinstall, remove, unhold, and unmarkauto: add the
           user tag  to all packages that match  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 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 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 to output its 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 correponding 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.

        F ,   display format 
           Specify the format which should be used to display output from the search command. For instance, passing "%p %V %v" for  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.

           This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::CmdLine::Package 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.

        h,   help
           Display a brief help message. Identical to the help action.

         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.

           This corresponds to the configuration option Aptitude::CmdLine::Safe Upgrade::No New Installs.

         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), allow the dependency
           resolver to install new packages regardless of the value of Aptitude::Safe Resolver::No New Installs.

        O ,   sort 
           Specify the order in which output from the search command should be displayed. For instance, passing "installsize" for  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).

        o =
           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
           Purge packages that are no longer required by any installed package. This is equivalent to passing " o Aptitude::Purge Unused=true" as a command line
           argument.

        q[=],   quiet[=]
           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 = 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  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 Aptitude::Keep Recommends.

        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 
           For full upgrade, safe upgrade forbid version, hold, install, keep all, markauto, unmarkauto, purge, reinstall, remove, unhold, and unmarkauto: remove
           the user 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 ,
           For full upgrade, safe upgrade forbid version, hold, install, keep all, markauto, unmarkauto, purge, reinstall, remove, unhold, and unmarkauto: remove
           the user tag  from all packages that match  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.

        t ,   target release 
           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 /
           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_preferences(5).

           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.

        w ,   width 
           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.

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