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Accepted
Juergen
Asked: 2018-10-27 04:19:09 +0800 CST

Finding installed packages not supported by the Ubuntu team

  • 772

How can I check whether I installed any Universe or Multiverse packages which are, according to /etc/apt/sources.list, "ENTIRELY UNSUPPORTED by the Ubuntu team" ?
What I'm looking for is a command line for Ubuntu 18 LTS server (no GUI) to list installed packages by componenent, including installed packages that are not available from apt-get (not part of the archives configured in /etc/apt/sources.list).
aptitude versions '?name(.)' lists the available packages and their installation status, but does not output their source component, nor does apt-cache.

package-management apt

4 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You can use ubuntu-support-status command

    $ ubuntu-support-status --help
Usage: ubuntu-support-status [options]

Options:
  -h, --help          show this help message and exit
  --show-unsupported  Show unsupported packages on this machine
  --show-supported    Show supported packages on this machine
  --show-all          Show all packages with their status
  --list              Show all packages in a list

    with corresponding argument --show-unsupported.

    Below is example from my 16.04.5 LTS system:

    $ ubuntu-support-status --show-unsupported

Support status summary of 'hostname':

You have 94 packages (1.9%) supported until April 2021 (Community - 5y)
You have 2668 packages (54.0%) supported until April 2021 (Canonical - 5y)
You have 647 packages (13.1%) supported until April 2019 (Community - 3y)

You have 79 packages (1.6%) that can not/no-longer be downloaded
You have 1456 packages (29.4%) that are unsupported

No longer downloadable:
acroread acroread-bin:i386 cpp-4.4 cpp-4.5 cpp-4.6 
... 

Unsupported: 
abiword-plugin-grammar adequate aglfn alien android android-tools-adb 
android-tools-fastboot ant ant-optional antiword apt-file
...
y-ppa-manager yad zenmap

    (I added the ... to limit number of lines).

    • 15 
  2. sudo apt install synaptic

    Open Synaptic Package Manager. Go to "Origin" (bottom left).

    • 4

  3. The Debian wiki shows how you can tell the difference between native and non-native packages.

    If you want to see the relation between sources.list and installed packages, you can use dpkg --get-selections and apt-cache show and apt-get update.

    Or search in a database of packages with curl.

    In Fedora/RHEL there's a tool for verifying that files come from supported packages.

    • 0

  4. What I finally did to get a readable list of everything that is not fully supported and without the clutter:

    # sed removes summary lines and packages supported for five years
# and prints one line per not fully supported package:
ubuntu-support-status --show-all | sed '0,/summary/ d; /^Support.*5y/,/^$/ d; /^You have/,/^$/ d; /:/ n; s- $--; s- -\n-g'

No longer downloadable:


Unsupported:
cgroup-tools
...

Supported until April 2021 (Community - 3y):
fonts-dejavu
libx86-1
openjdk-8-jre
openjdk-8-jre-headless
    • 0