Author: Mislav

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Linux Tutorial Series

Linux Tutorial Series – 136 – Review

Here is the video version, if you prefer it:

We talked about compression and package management. Here is a review of the most important things:

  • Use gzip fileName and gunzip fileName for archives ending in gz
  • Use tar cvf archiveName.tar file1 file2 … for creating a tar archive file and use tar xvf archiveName.tar to extract a tar archive
  • To update your package list, run apt-get update (prefixed with sudo)
  • apt-get install packageName to install packages from a package repository or dpgk -i packageFileName to install a package from a file
  • sudo apt --purge remove packageName to remove a package, then sudo apt --purge autoremove to remove its dependencies
  • To upgrade your packages, run apt-get upgrade
  • /etc/apt/sources.list keeps a list of repositories Linux looks into when it is searching for new packages

I hope you refreshed your memory!

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Linux Tutorial Series

Linux Tutorial Series – 135.1 – /etc/apt/sources.list

/etc/apt/sources.list file contains repositories your operating system searches for when it looks for packages.

So if some tutorial asks you to modify /etc/apt/sources.list, you are modifying (most likely adding) repositories your operating system looks at when it searches for packages.

Warning: Adding new unknown repositories can be dangerous, because you don’t know what the packages in these repositories contain. Keep this in mind.

Thank you for reading!

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Linux Tutorial Series

Linux Tutorial Series – 135 – Other package operations

Here is the video version, if you prefer it:

Besides installing, removing and upgrading packages, there are a lot of things you can do with them – you can list installed packages, determine whether a package was installed, display information about an installed package and find which package installed a file. (Shotts, 2019)⁠ I have never used these functionalities so far, so I will not talk about them. A quick Google search or a look at the reference can give you the answers to these queries, if you ever need to use them.

Thank you for reading!

References

Shotts, W. (2019). The Linux Command Line, Fifth Internet Edition. Retrieved from http://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php. Pages 202-203

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Linux Tutorial Series

Linux Tutorial Series – 134 – Upgrading a package

Here is the video version, if you prefer it:

Upgrading your packages means installing newer versions of them. You do so by running: (Shotts, 2019)⁠

apt-get upgrade

You do need to prefix it with sudo.

Hope you learned something useful!

References

Shotts, W. (2019). The Linux Command Line, Fifth Internet Edition. Retrieved from http://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php. Pages 201-202

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Linux Tutorial Series

Linux Tutorial Series – 133 – Removing a package

Here is the video version, if you prefer it:

Here is how you can remove packages from your computer: (“How can you completely remove a package?,” n.d.)⁠

sudo apt --purge remove packageName

Then after that, to remove the dependencies that were just used by that package and aren’t used by any other package anymore:

sudo apt --purge autoremove

There may be some configuration files left over, either in the .config directory in your home folder or as a standalone hidden file (which means its filename starts with a .). You have to delete those manually.

Hope you learned something useful!

References

How can you completely remove a package? (n.d.). Retrieved February 11, 2020, from https://askubuntu.com/questions/151941/how-can-you-completely-remove-a-package

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Linux Tutorial Series

Linux Tutorial Series – 132 – Installing a package

Here is the video version, if you prefer it:

There are two ways to install a package. (Shotts, 2019)⁠ One of them is from a repository:

apt-get install packageName

The other is from a file:

dpgk -i packageFileName

Hope you learned something useful!

References

Shotts, W. (2019). The Linux Command Line, Fifth Internet Edition. Retrieved from http://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php. Pages 199-200

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Linux Tutorial Series

Linux Tutorial Series – 131 – Finding a package

Here is the video version, if you prefer it:

To preface this: I personally always use Google to find the packages I need. Either I look for the package name on the distribution website or I am looking for specific packages I need to install for some purpose. I never used the commands that follow so far, but they are useful to know about.

To find a package you want to install, you can use the following command: (Shotts, 2019)⁠

apt-cache search query

An example:

mislav@mislavovo-racunalo:~/Linux_folder$ apt-cache search zip

advancecomp - collection of recompression utilities

node-almond - minimal AMD API implementation for use in optimized browser builds

amanda-client - Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver (Client)

amanda-server - Advanced Maryland Automatic Network Disk Archiver (Server)

…

You get a list of packages related to your search query.

You can also use

apt search query

for the same purpose.

Hope you learned something useful!

References

Shotts, W. (2019). The Linux Command Line, Fifth Internet Edition. Retrieved from http://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php. Page 199

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Linux Tutorial Series

Linux Tutorial Series – 130 – Updating your package list

Here is the video version, if you prefer it:

Before we go into how to install packages and related operations, let’s first establish a rule, if you will: Always run sudo apt-get update before doing any of the operations we will cover (besides removing a package).

Why is it so? Your operating system has a list of packages. Before installing any packages, it is a good idea to tell the operating system: “OK, operating system. Please check if there are more recent versions of packages available or if there are any new packages available.” (“What does ‘sudo apt-get update’ do?,” n.d.)⁠ You do so with sudo apt-get update. You need superuser permissions to run this command, hence the sudo.

Again, remember to run this command before any other package manipulation related actions besides removing a package.

Hope you learned something useful!

References

What does “sudo apt-get update” do? (n.d.). Retrieved February 11, 2020, from https://askubuntu.com/questions/222348/what-does-sudo-apt-get-update-do

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Linux Tutorial Series

Linux Tutorial Series – 129 – Package management

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Let’s talk about package management today. What is package management and why do we need it?

Let’s start with why do we need it. We need it because packages are a convenient way to deliver software – we deliver software like a package. Package management is a term for installing, modifying and removing packages. The alternative to installing software from a package is to install the software from source, but that is for another article.

Different Linux distributions use different packaging systems. (Shotts, 2019) A package consists of files that contain the software we are installing. Packages are available in repositories. Each distribution has its own repository with packages. If a software depends on something to run (such as an external piece of code to calculate something), then we say that that external piece of code is a dependency. Package managers (programs that manage packages) take care of dependencies when installing packages.

There are high-level package management tools (such as apt and apt-get in Debian-like distributions) and low-level package management tools (such as dpkg in Debian-like distributions). We will use those to manage our packages.

Hope you learned something new!

A caveat: In the following articles I will cover package management operations (installing, removing, …) using package manager that is used in Debian and Debian-like Linux distributions. I won’t cover other distributions. In case you have another distribution, I suggest using Google to find the equivalent commands.

References

Shotts, W. (2019). The Linux Command Line, Fifth Internet Edition. Retrieved from http://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php. Pages 196-199

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Linux Tutorial Series

Linux Tutorial Series – 128 – Other compression and archiving commands

Here is the video version, if you prefer it:

There are other compression commands (such as bzip2) and archiving commands (such as zip). (Shotts, 2019)⁠

zip may be useful; its syntax is:

zip zipFile fileToArchive

where zipFile is the newly created zip file and fileToArchive is the file you want to compress.

If your fileToArchive is a directory, use:

zip -r zipFile fileToArchive

To unzip use:

unzip zipFile

I never used bzip2 so far, but just know that it exists.

Hope you learned something useful!

References

Shotts, W. (2019). The Linux Command Line, Fifth Internet Edition. Retrieved from http://linuxcommand.org/tlcl.php. Pages 261-262; 268-270