dpkg-deb(1) - man - phpman

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Pack, unpack, and provide information about Debian archives.
Display information about a package
dpkg-deb {{-I|--info}} {{path/to/file.deb}}
Display the package's name and version on one line
dpkg-deb {{-W|--show}} {{path/to/file.deb}}
List the package's contents
dpkg-deb {{-c|--contents}} {{path/to/file.deb}}
Extract package's contents into a directory
dpkg-deb {{-x|--extract}} {{path/to/file.deb}} {{path/to/directory}}
Create a package from a specified directory
dpkg-deb {{-b|--build}} {{path/to/directory}}
dpkg-deb(1)                                  dpkg suite                                  dpkg-deb(1)



NAME
       dpkg-deb - Debian package archive (.deb) manipulation tool

SYNOPSIS
       dpkg-deb [option...] command

DESCRIPTION
       dpkg-deb packs, unpacks and provides information about Debian archives.

       Use dpkg to install and remove packages from your system.

       You can also invoke dpkg-deb by calling dpkg with whatever options you want to pass to dpkg-
       deb. dpkg will spot that you wanted dpkg-deb and run it for you.

       For most commands taking an input archive argument, the archive can be read from standard
       input if the archive name is given as a single minus character («-»); otherwise lack of
       support will be documented in their respective command description.

COMMANDS
       -b, --build binary-directory [archive|directory]
           Creates a debian archive from the filesystem tree stored in binary-directory. binary-
           directory must have a DEBIAN subdirectory, which contains the control information files
           such as the control file itself. This directory will not appear in the binary package's
           filesystem archive, but instead the files in it will be put in the binary package's
           control information area.

           Unless you specify --nocheck, dpkg-deb will read DEBIAN/control and parse it. It will
           check the file for syntax errors and other problems, and display the name of the binary
           package being built.  dpkg-deb will also check the permissions of the maintainer scripts
           and other files found in the DEBIAN control information directory.

           If no archive is specified then dpkg-deb will write the package into the file binary-
           directory.deb.

           If the archive to be created already exists it will be overwritten.

           If the second argument is a directory then dpkg-deb will write to the file
           directory/package_version_arch.deb.  When a target directory is specified, rather than a
           file, the --nocheck option may not be used (since dpkg-deb needs to read and parse the
           package control file to determine which filename to use).

       -I, --info archive [control-file-name...]
           Provides information about a binary package archive.

           If no control-file-names are specified then it will print a summary of the contents of
           the package as well as its control file.

           If any control-file-names are specified then dpkg-deb will print them in the order they
           were specified; if any of the components weren't present it will print an error message
           to stderr about each one and exit with status 2.

       -W, --show archive
           Provides information about a binary package archive in the format specified by the
           --showformat argument. The default format displays the package's name and version on one
           line, separated by a tabulator.

       -f, --field archive [control-field-name...]
           Extracts control file information from a binary package archive.

           If no control-field-names are specified then it will print the whole control file.

           If any are specified then dpkg-deb will print their contents, in the order in which they
           appear in the control file. If more than one control-field-name is specified then dpkg-
           deb will precede each with its field name (and a colon and space).

           No errors are reported for fields requested but not found.

       -c, --contents archive
           Lists the contents of the filesystem tree archive portion of the package archive. It is
           currently produced in the format generated by tar's verbose listing.

       -x, --extract archive directory
           Extracts the filesystem tree from a package archive into the specified directory.

           Note that extracting a package to the root directory will not result in a correct
           installation! Use dpkg to install packages.

           directory (but not its parents) will be created if necessary, and its permissions
           modified to match the contents of the package.

       -X, --vextract archive directory
           Is like --extract (-x) with --verbose (-v) which prints a listing of the files extracted
           as it goes.

       -R, --raw-extract archive directory
           Extracts the filesystem tree from a package archive into a specified directory, and the
           control information files into a DEBIAN subdirectory of the specified directory (since
           dpkg 1.16.1).

           The target directory (but not its parents) will be created if necessary.

           The input archive is not (currently) processed sequentially, so reading it from standard
           input («-») is not supported.

       --ctrl-tarfile archive
           Extracts the control data from a binary package and sends it to standard output in tar
           format (since dpkg 1.17.14). Together with tar(1) this can be used to extract a
           particular control file from a package archive.  The input archive will always be
           processed sequentially.

       --fsys-tarfile archive
           Extracts the filesystem tree data from a binary package and sends it to standard output
           in tar format. Together with tar(1) this can be used to extract a particular file from a
           package archive.  The input archive will always be processed sequentially.

       -e, --control archive [directory]
           Extracts the control information files from a package archive into the specified
           directory.

           If no directory is specified then a subdirectory DEBIAN in the current directory is used.

           The target directory (but not its parents) will be created if necessary.

       -?, --help
           Show the usage message and exit.

       --version
           Show the version and exit.

OPTIONS
       --showformat=format
           This option is used to specify the format of the output --show will produce. The format
           is a string that will be output for each package listed.

           The string may reference any status field using the “${field-name}” form, a list of the
           valid fields can be easily produced using -I on the same package. A complete explanation
           of the formatting options (including escape sequences and field tabbing) can be found in
           the explanation of the --showformat option in dpkg-query(1).

           The default for this field is “${Package}\t${Version}\n”.

       -zcompress-level
           Specify which compression level to use on the compressor backend, when building a package
           (default is 9 for gzip, 6 for xz and 19 for zstd).  The accepted values are 0-9 with: 0
           being mapped to compressor none for gzip.  Before dpkg 1.16.2 level 0 was equivalent to
           compressor none for all compressors.

       -Scompress-strategy
           Specify which compression strategy to use on the compressor backend, when building a
           package (since dpkg 1.16.2). Allowed values are none (since dpkg 1.16.4), filtered,
           huffman, rle and fixed for gzip (since dpkg 1.17.0) and extreme for xz.

       -Zcompress-type
           Specify which compression type to use when building a package.  Allowed values are gzip,
           xz (since dpkg 1.15.6), zstd (since dpkg 1.19.0.5ubuntu2) and none (default is zstd).

       --[no-]uniform-compression
           Specify that the same compression parameters should be used for all archive members (i.e.
           control.tar and data.tar; since dpkg 1.17.6).  Otherwise only the data.tar member will
           use those parameters. The only supported compression types allowed to be uniformly used
           are none, gzip, xz and zstd.  The --no-uniform-compression option disables uniform
           compression (since dpkg 1.19.0).  Uniform compression is the default (since dpkg 1.19.0).

       --root-owner-group
           Set the owner and group for each entry in the filesystem tree data to root with id 0
           (since dpkg 1.19.0).

           Note: This option can be useful for rootless builds (see rootless-builds.txt), but should
           not be used when the entries have an owner or group that is not root.  Support for these
           will be added later in the form of a meta manifest.

       --deb-format=format
           Set the archive format version used when building (since dpkg 1.17.0).  Allowed values
           are 2.0 for the new format, and 0.939000 for the old one (default is 2.0).

           The old archive format is less easily parsed by non-Debian tools and is now obsolete; its
           only use is when building packages to be parsed by versions of dpkg older than 0.93.76
           (September 1995), which was released as i386 a.out only.

       --nocheck
           Inhibits dpkg-deb --build's usual checks on the proposed contents of an archive. You can
           build any archive you want, no matter how broken, this way.

       -v, --verbose
           Enables verbose output (since dpkg 1.16.1).  This currently only affects --extract making
           it behave like --vextract.

       -D, --debug
           Enables debugging output. This is not very interesting.

EXIT STATUS
       0   The requested action was successfully performed.

       2   Fatal or unrecoverable error due to invalid command-line usage, or interactions with the
           system, such as accesses to the database, memory allocations, etc.

ENVIRONMENT
       DPKG_COLORS
           Sets the color mode (since dpkg 1.18.5).  The currently accepted values are: auto
           (default), always and never.

       TMPDIR
           If set, dpkg-deb will use it as the directory in which to create temporary files and
           directories.

       SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH
           If set, it will be used as the timestamp (as seconds since the epoch) in the deb(5)'s
           ar(5) container and used to clamp the mtime in the tar(5) file entries.

NOTES
       Do not attempt to use just dpkg-deb to install software! You must use dpkg proper to ensure
       that all the files are correctly placed and the package's scripts run and its status and
       contents recorded.

BUGS
       dpkg-deb -I package1.deb package2.deb does the wrong thing.

       There is no authentication on .deb files; in fact, there isn't even a straightforward
       checksum.  (Higher level tools like APT support authenticating .deb packages retrieved from a
       given repository, and most packages nowadays provide an md5sum control file generated by
       debian/rules. Though this is not directly supported by the lower level tools.)

SEE ALSO
       deb(5), deb-control(5), dpkg(1), dselect(1).



1.21.1                                       2025-09-09                                  dpkg-deb(1)