Linux Labs

Packages, services, and logs / Stage 1 of 13

Packages, dependencies and repositories

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Step 1 of 8 · on a machine · 4 min

The program is on the server

What you will learn

  • Tell a package archive apart from an installed package.
  • Read the version, architecture and dependencies in a package description.
  • Tell the installed version from the candidate in the APT indexes.

A colleague writes: "I put the reporting program on the server, in /srv/package-lab. Run lab-pkg-report and send me the output." See what is in the directory and run the program.

Exercise · look

Run your colleague's program

You are in /srv/package-lab. See what the directory holds and run lab-pkg-report.

First, predict

Your colleague is sure the program is already on the server. What will lab-pkg-report print?

Now start the exercise, run the command and compare your prediction with the output.

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Check yourself 1 question

Why did the shell not find lab-pkg-report, although files with that name are in /srv/package-lab?

  • Read access is there: ls printed the directory contents. The shell found no program by that name, so permissions never came into play.

  • A new terminal finds the same: the directory holds two .deb files, and there is no lab-pkg-report program file anywhere.

  • The shell would find and start a broken program, and it would print an error of its own. Here the program was not found: command not found.

The .deb files are archives: the program sits inside them until the package is installed.

Ubuntu 24.04
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