How to check what we have Installed in Debuian/Ubuntu OS

To check what have install by listing all using dpkg is easy.

dpkg -l

To check whether a package is install also easy.

dpkg -l | grep apache

The command above is some how redundant, because dpkg support wild characters, doing this instead

dpkg -l "apache*"

By doing this, it will also list the package that not install but available in dpkg cache, to install them you can simply apt-get. To indicate the packages installed it shows “ii” and not install shows “un”.

Shell Script File for Checking Package Installed or not Or If not then Install Package - For Ubuntu OS

Dpkg: check that unix package is installed. Bash script: install package if not present

dpkg -s can be used.

Example: is vlc installed?

> dpkg -s vlc|grep installed

Here is some logic in bash script, like installing package if it is not there:

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problem=$(dpkg -s vlc|grep installed) echo Checking for libxul: $problem if [ "" == "$problem" ]; then echo "No libxul. Setting up libxul" sudo apt-get --force-yes --yes install vlc fi