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Questions[dpkg](ubuntu)

Martin Hope
GoodNite
Asked: 2019-01-16 07:20:58 +0800 CST
  • 222

I'm trying to run this command in the terminal:

sudo apt install software-properties-common

This is the error message I get:

E: Could not get lock /var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend - open (11: Resource temporarily unavailable)  
E: Unable to acquire the dpkg frontend lock (/var/lib/dpkg/lock-frontend),   
 is another process using it?
package-management dpkg sudo apt lock
Martin Hope
Xiè Jìléi
Asked: 2011-05-05 05:11:44 +0800 CST
  • 515

Say, I have foo-1.2.3.deb which depends on perl and python, however, running command:

dpkg -i ./foo-1.2.3.deb

won't install these dependencies. So I must apt-get install perl python by hand.

How to make dpkg -i install these dependencies for me automatically?

dpkg
Martin Hope
theTuxRacer
Asked: 2010-12-26 01:02:58 +0800 CST
  • 136

I frequently need to check which packages are installed, and I use the following command:

dpkg -l | grep foo

which gives the following output

Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Cfg-files/Unpacked/Failed-cfg/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name                       Version         Description
ii   foo                       <version>         <description>
  1. What does the ii mean?
  2. What other flags are there?
  3. How to read the flags? (because the explanation is quite complicated, IMO)

Thanks.

command-line dpkg
Martin Hope
Jorge Castro
Asked: 2010-11-30 22:20:52 +0800 CST
  • 109

I use the dpkg -l command to find out what version of a package I have installed. For example:

dpkg -l network-manager

returns the information on the package:

Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name                      Version                   Description
+++-=========================-=========================-==================================================================
ii  network-manager           0.8.3~git.20101118t223039 network management framework daemon

As you can see, it returns 0.8.3~git.20101118t223039 which is wrong because it truncates the version (I've picked a long one for the purpose of this question). The way I've solved this in the past is to pass a stupidly long COLUMNS argument to make it expand:

COLUMNS=200 dpkg -l network-manager

which gives me the entire version number, but also a bunch of junk:

Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name                                         Version                                      Description
+++-============================================-============================================-========================================================================================================
ii  network-manager                              0.8.3~git.20101118t223039.d60a988-0ubuntu1   network management framework daemon

Now I can see the full version number, which is 0.8.3~git.20101118t223039.d60a988-0ubuntu1.

I get the feeling that this is not the proper way to find the version number of an installed package. This never really was a problem in the past, but with the tacking on of "ubuntu" in the versions and the proliferation of PPAs these strings are getting longer and longer. Is there an easier way?

command-line dpkg