Show files installed by a package

Sometimes an administrator needs to know what files a particular package has added to the system. Often he would like to use this feature to get the package configuration files. Even an ordinary user takes advantage from this operation. For example he may wish to understand which is the package impact on the machine.

Tabella 5.6: Display all files installed by a package.

                       

Display files

The Debian package management system has a limitation in this and in the next operation due to its configuration files policy. It separates two concepts (from [IJ98]):

• configuration file: A file that affects the operation of a program, or provides site- or host-specific information, or otherwise customizes the behavior of a program. Typically, configuration files are intended to be modified by the system administrator (if needed or desired) to conform to local policy or to provide more useful site-specific behavior;
• conffile: A file listed in a package's conffiles file, and is treated specially by dpkg.

Each conffile is listed in $\texttt{/var/lib/dpkg/info/}$pkg $\texttt{.conffiles}$. The $\texttt{dpkg -L}$ command shows these files and so PackageFS may support them, whereas no way to get the package configuration files is provided. This is currently a flaw of the Debian package management system. In section 6.4 we show how to face this problem.