List files of a Debian or Ubuntu package

This article briefly shows you how to look inside a .deb file on a Debian or Ubuntu Linux.

List the content of an installed package

With the option -L we ask dpkg to list the content of an installed package by providing it the package name e.g. apache2.

$ dpkg -L apache2
/.
/usr
/usr/share
/usr/share/bug
/usr/share/bug/apache2
/usr/share/bug/apache2/control
/usr/share/doc
/usr/share/bug/apache2/script
/usr/share/doc/apache2

With dpkg -l you get listed all your installed packages on your system.

List the content of a package before being installed

There are two different ways of how to inspect the content before installing a package.

1. Download the package for local inspection. You achieve this either with aptitude or apt-get.

   aptitude download anacron
   apt-get --download-only anacron
   

   Then inspect the package as follows while providing it the option -c or the equivalent --contents.

   dpkg --contents anacron_2.3-14_amd64.deb
   dpkg -c anacron_2.3-14_amd64.deb
   

   You won’t just get a list of the containing files but the output will also tell you the file permissions, owner and group as well.

   drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2009-11-02 04:48 ./
   drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2009-11-02 04:48 ./etc/
   drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2009-11-02 04:48 ./etc/cron.d/
   -rw-r--r-- root/root       244 2009-11-02 04:48 ./etc/cron.d/anacron
   drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2009-11-02 04:48 ./etc/init.d/
   -rwxr-xr-x root/root      1336 2009-11-02 04:48 ./etc/init.d/anacron
   drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2009-11-02 04:48 ./etc/cron.daily/
   -rwxr-xr-x root/root       311 2009-11-02 04:48 ./etc/cron.daily/0anacron
   drwxr-xr-x root/root         0 2009-11-02 04:48 ./etc/cron.weekly/
   -rwxr-xr-x root/root       312 2009-11-02 04:48 ./etc/cron.weekly/0anacron
   ...
   

2. An alternative to dpkg -c you can use the APT package searching utility. Before listing the content you should/must update the package database.

   $ sudo apt-file update
   $ apt-file list anacron
   

   The output will differ slightly. The file permissions are missing here and the directories won’t be displayed seperately.

   anacron: /etc/anacrontab
   anacron: /etc/apm/event.d/anacron
   anacron: /etc/cron.d/anacron
   anacron: /etc/cron.daily/0anacron
   anacron: /etc/cron.monthly/0anacron
   anacron: /etc/cron.weekly/0anacron
   anacron: /etc/init.d/anacron
   anacron: /usr/lib/pm-utils/power.d/anacron
   anacron: /usr/lib/pm-utils/sleep.d/95anacron
   anacron: /usr/sbin/anacron
   anacron: /usr/share/doc/anacron/README.Debian
   anacron: /usr/share/doc/anacron/README.gz
   anacron: /usr/share/doc/anacron/TODO
   anacron: /usr/share/doc/anacron/changelog.Debian.gz
   anacron: /usr/share/doc/anacron/changelog.gz
   anacron: /usr/share/doc/anacron/copyright
   anacron: /usr/share/man/man5/anacrontab.5.gz
   anacron: /usr/share/man/man8/anacron.8.gz
   

Featured image mixed from kaelin.fe on flickr and Debian on wikipedia.