Home / ubuntu / Questions / 1529804
Accepted
user1961772
Asked: 2024-10-13 12:00:19 +0800 CST

Installed packages - are they all executable?

  • 772

Using apt list --installed I got a list of installed packages. I have plenty of time and wanted to go through the list and see what's what. Are they all executable? I see that accountsservice is the first one on the list, but it's not executable as far as I can see. It just returns command not found. Third on the list is adduser, and that is executable. I know that's a standalone command too.

Are some of them system applications that can only be called by the OS and cannot actually be executed individually?

apt

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Packages are not directly executable.

    Packages contain groups of files. Some of those files are executable. Some are not.

    Example: Let's look at the hello package.

    $ dpkg -L hello
/usr/bin/hello
/usr/share/doc/hello/NEWS.gz
/usr/share/doc/hello/changelog.Debian.gz
/usr/share/doc/hello/copyright
/usr/share/info/hello.info.gz
/usr/share/man/man1/hello.1.gz

    In this example, one file /usr/bin/hello in the package is executable. The other five files in the package are not executable.

    The executable hello has the same name as the package hello. That similarity is not required. Executable(s) and packages sometimes have different names.

    • 1

  2. Execution depends on package type and its system:

    In Linux or macOS: .so (shared objects) or .dylib (dynamic libraries) which are not directly executable but provide code for other programs.

    In Windows: .dll (dynamic link libraries) and .exe (executables), but not all .exe files are meant to be run directly.

    • 0