37. Package Maintenance¶

SolarNodeOS supports a wide variety of software packages. You can install new packages as well as apply package updates as they become available. The apt command performs these tasks.

37.1 Update package metadata¶

For SolarNodeOS to know what packages, or package updates, are available, you need to periodically update the available package information. This is done with the apt update command:

sudo apt update # (1)!

1. The sudo command runs other commands with administrative privledges. It will prompt you for your user account password (typically the solar user).

37.2 List installed packages¶

Use the apt list command to list the installed packages:

apt list --installed

37.3 Update packages¶

To see if there are any package updates available, run apt list like this:

apt list --upgradable

If there are updates available, that will show them. You can apply all package updates with the apt upgrade command, like this:

sudo apt upgrade

If you want to install an update for a specific package, use the apt install command instead.

37.4 Search for packages¶

Use the apt search command to search for packages. By default this will match package names and their descriptions. You can search just for package names by including a --names-only argument.

# search for "name" across package names and descriptions
apt search name

# search for "name" across package names only
apt search --names-only name

# multiple search terms are logically "and"-ed together
apt search name1 name2

37.5 Install packages¶

The apt install command will install an available package, or an individual package update.

sudo apt install mypackage

37.6 Remove packages¶

You can remove packages with the apt remove command. That command will preserve any system configuration associated with the package(s); if you would like to also remove that you can use the apt purge command.

sudo apt remove mypackage

# use `purge` to also remove configuration
sudo apt purge mypackage