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dpkg-query

dpkg-query is a command line tool to query the dpkg database.

dpkg-query [option…] command

Commands

	Long form	Argument
`-l`	`--list`	`[package-name-pattern…]`	See also `apt list`
`-W`	`--show`	`[package-name-pattern…]`
`-s`	`--status`	`[package-name…]`	Report status of specified package or display all package entries in the status database. Compare with `dpkg -s`.
`-L`	`--listfiles`	`package-name…`
	`--control-list`	`package-name`
	`--control-show`	`package-name control-file`
`-c`	`--control-path`	`package-name [control-file]`
`-S`	`--search`	`filename-search-pattern…`
`-p`	`--print-avail`	`[package-name…]`
`-?`	`--help`
	`--version`

Options

`--admindir=dir`
`--load-avail`
`--no-pager`
`-f`, `--showformat=format`	`dpkg-query --show -f '${Package} ${Version} ${Section}\n'`

Query a package's version

Uh oh, am I affected by CVE-2024-6387?

$ dpkg-query --showformat='${Version}\n' --show openssh-server
1:9.2p1-2+deb12u2

$ dpkg-query --showformat='${Version}\n' --show openssh-client
1:9.2p1-2+deb12u2

Indeed, it seems to be the case.

So, update openssh:

$ sudo apt update
$ sudo apt upgrade openssh-client openssh-server
$ dpkg-query --showformat='${Version}\n' --show openssh-server openssh-client
1:9.2p1-2+deb12u3
1:9.2p1-2+deb12u3

Find packages with a given priority

The following query find package with the package priority important:

$ dpkg-query -W -f='${Package} ${Priority}\n' | grep important | cut -f 1 -d' '
adduser
apt
apt-utils
cpio
cron
debconf
debconf-i18n
debian-archive-keyring
dmidecode
fdisk
gpgv
groff-base
ifupdown
init
iproute2
iputils-ping
isc-dhcp-client
isc-dhcp-common
kmod
less
libbz2-1.0
libcap2-bin
libpcre3
logrotate
man-db
nano
net-tools
netbase
netcat-openbsd
nftables
procps
rsyslog
systemd
systemd-sysv
udev
vim-common
vim-tiny

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