SYNOPSIS
aptitude [<options>...] {autoclean | clean | forget-new | keep-all |
update | upgrade}
aptitude [<options>...] {changelog | dist-upgrade | download |
forbid-version | hold | install | keep-all | markauto | purge
| reinstall | remove | show | unhold | unmarkauto}
<packages>...
aptitude [<options>...] search <patterns>...
aptitude [-S <fname>] [-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
(“~”), 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 “=<version>”
to the package name: for instance, “aptitude install apt=0.3.1”.
Similarly, to select a package from a particular archive, append
“/<archive>” 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:
<package>+
<package>=
Place <package> on hold: cancel any active installation,
upgrade, or removal, and prevent this package from being
automatically upgraded in the future.
<package>:
Keep <package> at its current version: cancel any
installation, removal, or upgrade. Unlike “hold” (above) this
does not prevent automatic upgrades in the future.
<package>&M
Mark <package> as having been automatically installed.
<package>&m
Mark <package> 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 upgrade commands, while keep
merely cancels any scheduled actions on the package. unhold will
cause a package to be upgraded by future 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.
forbid-version
Forbid a package from being upgraded to a particular version. This
equivalent to “apt-get update”)
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 will
not be installed.
If a package cannot be upgraded without violating these constraints,
it will be kept at its current version. Use the dist-upgrade command
to upgrade these packages as well.
dist-upgrade
Upgrades installed packages to their most recent version, removing
or installing packages as necessary. This command is less
conservative than upgrade and thus more likely to perform unwanted
actions. Users are advised to either use upgrade instead or to
carefully inspect the list of packages to be installed and removed.
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’” will list
all “new” packages. 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
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 =<version> to the package name; you can display the
version from a particular archive by appending /<archive> 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.
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 =<version> to the package name;
you can select the version from a particular archive by appending
/<archive> to the package name.
download
Downloads the .deb file for the given package to the current
directory.
By default, the version which would be installed with “aptitude
install” is downloaded. You can select a particular version of a
package by appending =<version> to the package name; you can select
the version from a particular archive by appending /<archive> to the
package name.
help
Displays a brief summary of the available commands and options.
OPTIONS
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 <format>, --display-format <format>
Specify the format which should be used to display output from the
search command. For instance, passing “%p %V %v” for <format> 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).
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.
-h, --help
Display a brief help message. Identical to the help action.
--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.
-P, --prompt
Always display a prompt, even when no actions other than those
explicitly requested will be performed.
This corresponds to the configuration option
Aptitude::CmdLine::Always-Prompt.
-R, --without-recommends
Do not 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
Aptitude::Recommends-Important
-r, --with-recommends
Treat recommendations as dependencies when installing new packages
(this overrides settings in /etc/apt/apt.conf and
~/.aptitude/config).
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 <release>, --target-release <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 /<release> 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.
-O <order>, --sort <order>
Specify the order in which output from the search command should be
displayed. For instance, passing “installsize” for <order> 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 <key>=<value>
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.
-q[=<n>], --quiet[=<n>]
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 =<n> 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 <n> times.
-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
-w <width>, --width <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.
The following options apply to the visual mode of the program, but are
primarily for internal use; you generally won’t need to use them
yourself.
-S <fname>
Loads the extended state information from <fname> instead of the
standard state file.
-u
Begins updating the package lists as soon as the program starts. You
cannot use this option and -i at the same time.
-i
Displays a download preview when the program starts (equivalent to
starting the program and immediately pressing “g”). You cannot use
this option and “-u” at the same time.
ENVIRONMENT
HOME
If $HOME/.aptitude exists, aptitude will store its configuration
file in $HOME/.aptitude/config. Otherwise, it will look up the
current user’s home directory using getpwuid(2) and place its
configuration file there.
PAGER
If this environment variable is set, aptitude will use it to display
changelogs when “aptitude changelog” is invoked. If not set, it
the package aptitude-doc-<lang>
AUTHORS
Daniel Burrows <dburrows@debian.org>
Author.
Daniel Burrows <dburrows@debian.org>
Author.
COPYRIGHT
This manual page is free software; you can redistribute it and/or
modify it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as
published by the Free Software Foundation; either version 2 of the
License, or (at your option) any later version.
This manual page is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but
WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU
General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License along
with this manual page; if not, write to the Free Software Foundation,
Inc., 59 Temple Place, Suite 330, Boston, MA 02111-1307 USA
02/26/2007 APTITUDE(8)
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