Aptitude

Search for packages

chryslerqa:~# aptitude search apache2
p   apache2                                              - Apache HTTP Server metapackage
p   apache2-dbg                                          - Apache debugging symbols
v   apache2-dev                                          -
p   apache2-doc                                          - Apache HTTP Server documentation
v   apache2-mpm                                          -
p   apache2-mpm-event                                    - Apache HTTP Server - event driven model
p   apache2-mpm-itk                                      - multiuser MPM for Apache 2.2
p   apache2-mpm-prefork                                  - Apache HTTP Server - traditional non-threaded model
p   apache2-mpm-worker                                   - Apache HTTP Server - high speed threaded model
p   apache2-prefork-dev                                  - Apache development headers - non-threaded MPM
p   apache2-src                                          - Apache source code
p   apache2-suexec                                       - Standard suexec program for Apache 2 mod_suexec
p   apache2-suexec-custom                                - Configurable suexec program for Apache 2 mod_suexec
p   apache2-threaded-dev                                 - Apache development headers - threaded MPM
p   apache2-utils                                        - utility programs for webservers
p   apache2.2-common                                     - Apache HTTP Server common files
p   gforge-web-apache2                                   - collaborative development tool - web part (using Apache)
p   libapache2-authcassimple-perl                        - Apache2 module to authentificate trough a CAS server
p   libapache2-authenntlm-perl                           - Perform Microsoft NTLM and Basic User Authentication

Package Status

chryslerqa:~# aptitude show php5
Package: php5
State: not installed
Version: 5.2.6.dfsg.1-1+lenny9
Priority: optional
Section: web
Maintainer: Debian PHP Maintainers <pkg-php-maint@lists.alioth.debian.org>
Uncompressed Size: 20.5k
Depends: libapache2-mod-php5 (>= 5.2.6.dfsg.1-1+lenny9) | libapache2-mod-php5filter (>= 5.2.6.dfsg.1-1+lenny9) | php5-cgi
         (>= 5.2.6.dfsg.1-1+lenny9), php5-common (>= 5.2.6.dfsg.1-1+lenny9)
Description: server-side, HTML-embedded scripting language (metapackage)
 This package is a metapackage that, when installed, guarantees that you have at least one of the three server-side
 versions of the PHP5 interpreter installed. Removing this package won't remove PHP5 from your system, however it may
 remove other packages that depend on this one.
 
 PHP5 is an HTML-embedded scripting language. Much of its syntax is borrowed from C, Java and Perl with a couple of unique
 PHP-specific features thrown in. The goal of the language is to allow web developers to write dynamically generated pages
 quickly. This version of PHP5 was built with the Suhosin patch.
Homepage: http://www.php.net/

Install

Update the systems source files.

# aptitude update

Upgrade the packages

# aptitude safe-upgrade

Upgrade the packages without prompt

# aptitude safe-upgrade -y

Install foo:

# aptitude install foo

Check log

tail -n 30 /var/log/aptitude