Package Manager Search Commands

In a given week, I touch maybe a half dozen different Operating Systems/Distributions. Some are similar to others (centos, rhel), some–not so much (solaris). The common commands are easy enough to remember ( @ls@ vs @dir@ ), but I always forget how to search through each OS’s package manager for a software package. For my reference (and perhaps yours?) here’s a list for each of the OSs’ package managers I use frequently:

yum – RHEL/CentOS


yum list


apt – Debian/Ubuntu


apt-cache search


pacman – Arch


pacman --sync --search
pacman -Ss


portage – Gentoo


emerge --search # pkg names only
emerge --searchdesc # pkg names & descriptions
emerge -S # alias of --searchdesc
 

See Also: “Install ‘build-essential’ on RHEL/CentOS and OpenSolaris”:/wp/?p=231

Michael Altfield

Hi, I’m Michael Altfield. I write articles about opsec, privacy, and devops ➡

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