Package Managers

Common Commands

These are the commands used for common operation tasks when handling packages.

Action

APT (Debian)

DNF/YUM (Fedora)

Pacman (Arch Linux)

Zyyper (openSUSE)

Install

apt-get install

dnf install

pacman -S

zypper search

Uninstall

apt-get remove

dnf remove

pacman -Rns

zypper remove

Update

apt-get update && apt-get upgrade

dnf update

pacman -Sy

zypper update

Operating system upgrade

apt-get dist-upgrade

dnf distro-sync

pacman -Syyu

zypper dist-upgrade

Search for a package based on it’s name

apt-cache search

dnf search

pacman -Ss

zypper search

Search for a package based on a file it has

apt-file search

dnf whatprovides

pacman -F

zypper –provides –match-exact

Download a package

apt-get download

dnf download

pacman -S -w

zypper download

DEB

Repositories

Adding a Repository

Debian repositories can be managed by editing the primary file /etc/apt/sources.list or by adding new files to the /etc/apt/sources.list.d/ directory.

The syntax is:

<SOURCE> <URL> <DEBIAN_RELEASE> <COMPONENT1> <COMPONENT2> <COMPONENT3>

Sources:

  • deb = Binary packages.

  • deb-src = Source packages.

The URL is assumed to have the path http://<DOMAIN>/<PATH_TO>/dists/<DEBIAN_RELEASE> available. The only part of the URL required is the location where the top-level dists directory resides.

URL:

  • http://ftp.debian.org/debian/

Debian releases (as of 2017-03):

  • oldstable or wheezy

  • stable or jessie

  • testing or stretch

  • unstable or sid

Components:

  • main = The primary packages of Debian.

  • contrib = These packages require dependencies that are not in the main section.

  • non-free = These packages are proprietary packages that are unable to be shipped with Debian due to license conflicts.

[1]

Automatic Updates

The latest versions of both Debian and Ubuntu will automatically update the list of available updates and also upgrade those packages. This can be disabled by modifying the /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/10periodic and /etc/apt/apt.conf.d/20auto-upgrades configuration files. [16]

APT::Periodic::Update-Package-Lists "0";
APT::Periodic::Unattended-Upgrade "0";

Ubuntu

Hardware Enablement

Hardware Enablement (HWE), or Ubuntu LTS enablement, provides select backports from newer Ubuntu releases to allow newer hardware to work. Starting with Ubuntu Desktop 20.04.1 (not Server), the HWE packages are installed by default in each minor release.

Ubuntu 18.04:

$ sudo apt-get install linux-generic-hwe-18.04 linux-headers-generic-hwe-18.04 xserver-xorg-hwe-18.04

Ubuntu 20.04 (there is no longer an Xorg HWE package):

$ sudo apt-get install linux-generic-hwe-20.04 linux-headers-generic-hwe-20.04

[18]

ubuntu-drivers

The ubuntu-drivers package provides a user-friendly way to install proprietary drivers, view what devices need those drivers, and what drivers are available.

$ sudo ubuntu-drivers {autoinstall,devices,list}

PKGBUILD

Pacman

Arch Linux uses pacman as the default package manager to manage PKGBUILD packages.

Parallel Downloads

The pacman package manager only downloads a single package at a time by default. It is recommended configure this to download five packages in parallel at a time. [4]

$ sudo vim /etc/pacman.conf
[options]
ParallelDownloads = 5

RPM

Repositories

Repositories (sometimes called “repos”) are a central location where packages can easily be found and installed from.

Adding a Repository

On Red Hat based systems, the repositories are all defined as text files with the “.repo” extension in this directory.

$ sudo ls /etc/yum.repos.d/

Common options for repository files:

  • [] = This should be the first part of a repository, with the name being inside the brackets.

  • name = This should be similar to the name from the brackets. However, this friendly name can be different and is usually ignored.

  • baseurl = The location of the repository. Valid location types include “http://”, “ftp://”, and “file://” for using the local file system.

  • mirrorlist = Instead of a baseurl, a link to a list of repository mirrors can be given.

  • enabled = Enable or disable a repository with a “1” or “0”. The default is value is “1”. [2]

  • gpgcheck = Force a GPG encryption check against signed packages. Enable or disable with a “1” or “0”.

  • gpgkey = Specify the path to the GPG key.

Variables for repository files:

  • $releasever = The RHEL release version. This is typically the major operating system versioning number such as “6” or “7”.

  • $basearch = The CPU architecture. For most modern PCs this is typically either automatically filled in as “x86_64” for 64-bit operating systems or “i386” for 32-bit. [3]

At the bare minimum, a repository file needs to include a name and a baseurl.

[example-repo]
name=example-repo
baseurl=file:///var/www/html/example-repo/

Here is an example repository file for the official CentOS 7 repository using a mirrorlist.

[base]
name=CentOS-$releasever - Base
mirrorlist=http://mirrorlist.centos.org/?release=$releasever&arch=$basearch&repo=os&infra=$infra
#baseurl=http://mirror.centos.org/centos/$releasever/os/$basearch/
gpgcheck=1
gpgkey=file:///etc/pki/rpm-gpg/RPM-GPG-KEY-CentOS-7

Common Repositories

Name

Supported Operating Systems

Official

Description

Links

CentOS Vault

CentOS

Yes

Old and unmaintained major and minor releases of CentOS

CentOS Vault

Enterprise Linux Repository (ELRepo)

CentOS, RHEL

No

The latest hardware drivers and Linux kernels. [8]

Get started

Extra Packages for Enterprise Linux (EPEL)

CentOS, RHEL

Yes

Packages from Fedora built for Enterprise Linux (RHEL) based operating systems. On EL <= 7, these require both the extras and optional repositories to be enabled. [6]

Quickstart

Inline with Upstream (IUS)

CentOS, RHEL

No

The latest upstream software that is built for RHEL. IUS packages that can safely replace system packages will. IUS packages known to cause conflicts with operating system packages are installed in a separate location. [7]

Setup

Kernel Vanilla

Fedora

Yes

Kernel packages for the latest stable and mainline Linux kernels. [11]

How to use

RPM Fusion

CentOS, Fedora, RHEL

No

Packages that Fedora does not ship by default (primarily due to license conflicts). [9]

Configuration

RPM Sphere

Fedora

No

openSUSE packages that are not available in Fedora. [10]

Install

Wine

Fedora

Yes

The latest stable, development, and staging packages for Wine.

Installing

Red Hat Repositories

Red Hat provides different repositories for Red Hat Enterprise Linux operating systems. Many of these provide access to licensed downstream software maintained by the company and obtained through subscriptions.

The “subscription-manager” command is used to manage these repositories.

$ sudo subscription-manager repos --enable <RED_HAT_REPOSITORY>

Common repositories:

  • rhel-7-server-extras-rpms

  • rhel-7-server-optional-rpms

  • rhel-7-server-devtools-rpms = Developer Tools. Useful packages for software developers. The subscriptions that can enable this are listed here.

  • rhel-server-rhscl-7-rpms = Software Collections. Newer versions of software, usually aligning with upstream, are provided. They are installed into a prefix directory that is separate from the operating system libraries. [14]

Fedora

Fedy

Fedora, by default, only provides free and open source software (no proprietary packages). The graphical utility Fedy allows a user to easily install required packages for media codecs, Oracle Java, and other utilities and tweaks. Both the free and non-free RPMFusion repositories have to be installed first.

$ sudo dnf install "https://dl.folkswithhats.org/fedora/$(rpm -E %fedora)/RPMS/fedy-release.rpm"
$ sudo dnf install fedy
$ fedy

[15]

Exclude Package Updates

Examples:

  • Temporarily exclude kernel and NVIDIA updates.

    $ sudo dnf update --exclude=kernel* --exclude=nvidia*

  • Permanently exclude Firefox, kernel, and Shutter updates for Fedora. [19]

    $ sudo -E ${EDITOR} /etc/yum.repos.d/fedora-updates.repo

    [updates]
exclude=firefox* kernel* shutter

  • Exclude 32-bit packages from being installed and updated system-wide. [20]

    $ sudo -E ${EDITOR} /etc/dnf/dnf.conf

    [main]
exclude=*.i?86 *.i686

Flatpak

Flatpak is a sandbox solution that provides a universal application packaging format. It was first started by an employee from Red Hat in their spare time. Flatpak has a strong focus on portability, security, and effective space usage. [12] This package manager is available for most modern Linux distributions. [13]

Troubleshooting

Errors

Error: Invalid version flag: if when running a yum [install|update] command:

Solution:

  • This is due to a difference between EL 7 and 8 repositories. Check which major version of EL is configured for all of the YUM/DNF repositories. [17]

Error Operation is too slow when installing packages or updating database cache with Pacman:

$ sudo pacman -S -y -y
:: Synchronizing package databases...
error: failed retrieving file '<REPOSITORY>.db' from <MIRROR_DOMAIN> : Operation too slow. Less than 1024 bytes/sec transferred the last 10 seconds

Solutions [5]:

  • Use faster Pacman mirrors.

  • For slow internet connections, use wget for downloading packages. It will not stop downloading if the connection is too slow.

    $ sudo pacman -S wget
$ sudo -E ${EDITOR} /etc/pacman.conf

    [options]
XferCommand = /usr/bin/wget --passive-ftp -c -O %o %u

History

Bibliography

  1. “SourcesList.” Debian Wiki. March 22, 2017. Accessed March 28, 2017. https://wiki.debian.org/SourcesList

  2. “Fedora 24 System Administrator’s Guide” Fedora Documentation. 2016. Accessed June 28, 2016. https://docs.fedoraproject.org/en-US/Fedora/24/html/System_Administrators_Guide/sec-Setting_repository_Options.html

  3. “yum.conf - Configuration file for yum(8).” Die. Accessed June 28, 2016. http://linux.die.net/man/5/yum.conf

  4. “pacman.conf(5).” Arch Linux. May 20, 2021. Accessed September 9, 2021. https://archlinux.org/pacman/pacman.conf.5.html

  5. “[Solved] Pacman transfer speed check.” Arch Linux Forums. August 19, 2015. Accessed October 5, 2022. https://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=137981

  6. “EPEL.” Fedora Project. March 1, 2017. Accessed May 14, 2017. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/EPEL

  7. “IUS Community Project.” IUS. May 5, 2017. Accessed May 14, 2017. https://ius.io/

  8. “Welcome to the ELRepo Project.” ELRepo. April 4, 2017. Accessed May 14, 2017. http://elrepo.org/tiki/tiki-index.php

  9. “RPM Fusion.” RPM Fusion. March 31, 2017. Accessed May 14, 2017. https://rpmfusion.org/RPM%20Fusion

  10. “RPM Sphere.” openSUSE Build Service. Accessed September 4, 2017. https://build.opensuse.org/project/show/home:zhonghuaren

  11. “Kernel Vanilla Repositories.” Fedora Project Wiki. February 28, 2017. Accessed September 8, 2017. https://fedoraproject.org/wiki/Kernel_Vanilla_Repositories

  12. “About Flatpak.” Flatpak. March 18, 2017. Accessed March 19, 2017. http://flatpak.org/

  13. “Getting Flatpak.” Flatpak. March 18, 2017. Accessed March 19, 2017. http://flatpak.org/getting.html

  14. “Red Hat Developer Tools software repository not available.” Red Hat Community Discussions. November 14, 2017. Accessed February 26, 2018. https://access.redhat.com/discussions/3155021

  15. “Install codecs, software, and more…” Fedy - Tweak your Fedora. Accessed March 18, 2019. https://www.folkswithhats.org/

  16. “UnattendedUpgrades.” Debian Wiki. August 19, 2019. Accessed September 5, 2020. https://wiki.debian.org/UnattendedUpgrades

  17. “Need to set up yum repository for locally-mounted DVD on Red Hat Enterprise Linux 7.” Red Hat Knowledgebase. August 20, 2019. Accessed September 16, 2020. https://access.redhat.com/solutions/1355683#comment-1514411

  18. “LTSEnablementStack.” Ubuntu Wiki. January 27, 2021. Accessed February 23, 2021. https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Kernel/LTSEnablementStack

  19. “How do I exclude kernel or other packages from getting updated in Red Hat Enterprise Linux while updating system via yum?” Red Hat Customer Portal. August 15, 2022. Accessed July 31, 2023. https://www.tecmint.com/exclude-package-updates-yum-dnf-command/

  20. “How to Disable Package Updates Using YUM/DNF in RHEL Linux.” TecMint. December 9, 2021. Accessed July 31, 2023. https://access.redhat.com/solutions/10185