DNF5 Package Management Utility

Synopsis

dnf5 <command> [options] [<args>...]

Description

DNF5 is the new version of DNF, a package manager for RPM-based Linux distributions. It has been completely rewritten in C++ aiming for better performance and reducing external dependencies.

Commands

Here is the list of the available commands. For more details see the separate man page for the specific command, f.e. man dnf5 install.

advisory: Manage advisories.
autoremove: Remove unneeded packages.
check: Check for problems in the package database.
check-upgrade: Check for available package upgrades.
clean: Remove or invalidate cached data.
distro-sync: Upgrade or downgrade installed packages to the latest available version.
downgrade: Downgrade packages.
download: Download packages.
environment: Manage comps environments.
group: Manage comps groups.
info: Provide detailed information about installed or available packages.
install: Install packages.
leaves: List groups of leaf packages.
list: List installed or available packages.
makecache: Generate the metadata cache.
mark: Change the reason of an installed package.
module: Manage modules.
offline: Manage offline transactions.
provides: Find what package provides the given value.
reinstall: Reinstall packages.
remove: Remove packages.
repo: Manage repositories.
repoquery: Search for packages in repositories.
search: Search for packages using keywords.
swap: Remove software and install another in the single transaction.
system-upgrade: Upgrade the system to a new major release.
upgrade: Upgrade packages.
versionlock: Protect packages from updates to newer versions.

Plugin commands

Here is the list of the commands available as plugins. These are available after installing the dnf5-plugins package.

automatic: Alternative CLI to dnf upgrade suitable to be executed automatically and regularly from systemd timers, cron jobs and similar.
builddep: Install missing dependencies for building an RPM package.
changelog: Show package changelogs.
config-manager: Manages main configuration, repositories configuration, and variables.
copr: Manage Copr repositories (add-ons provided by users/community/third-party).
needs-restarting: Determine whether the system should be rebooted.
repoclosure: Display a list of unresolved dependencies for repositories.

Options

Following options are applicable in the general context for any dnf5 command:

--assumeno: Automatically answer no for all questions.

--best

Try the best available package versions in transactions.

Specifically during dnf upgrade, which by default skips over updates that can not be installed for dependency reasons, the switch forces DNF5 to only consider the latest packages. When running into packages with broken dependencies, DNF5 will fail giving the reason why the latest version can not be installed.

Note that the use of the newest available version is only guaranteed for the packages directly requested (e.g. as a command line arguments), and the solver may use older versions of dependencies to meet their requirements.

-C, --cacheonly

Use only cached data for working with packages and repository metadata.

Cache won’t be updated, even if it is expired.

--comment=COMMENT

Add a comment to the transaction history.

--config=CONFIG_FILE_PATH: Define configuration file location.
--debugsolver: Dump additional data from solver for debugging purposes.

Data are saved in ./debugdata.
--disable-plugin=PLUGIN_NAME,...: Disable specified plugins for the purpose of the current DNF5 command.

This is a list option which can be specified multiple times.

Accepted values are names, or a glob of names.
--disable-repo=REPO_ID,...: Temporarily disable active repositories for the purpose of the current DNF5 command.

This is a list option which can be specified multiple times.

Accepted values are ids, or a glob of ids.
--dump-main-config: Print main configuration values to stdout.
--dump-repo-config=REPO_ID,...: Print repository configuration values to stdout.

This is a list option which can be specified multiple times.

Accepted values are ids, or a glob of ids.
--dump-variables: Print variable values to stdout.
--enable-plugin=PLUGIN_NAME,...: Enable specified plugins for the purpose of the current DNF5 command.

This is a list option which can be specified multiple times.

Accepted values are names, or a glob of names.
--enable-repo=REPO_ID,...: Temporarily enable additional repositories for the purpose of the current DNF5 command.

This is a list option which can be specified multiple times.

Accepted values are ids, or a glob of ids.
--forcearch=ARCH: Force the use of a specific architecture.

See dnf5-forcearch(7) for more info.

-h, --help: Show the help.
--installroot=ABSOLUTE_PATH: Setup installroot path.

Absolute path is required.

See dnf5-installroot(7) for more info.

--no-best

Do not limit the transaction to the best candidates only.

--no-docs

Do not install any files that are marked as a documentation (which includes man pages and texinfo documents).

It sets the RPMTRANS_FLAG_NODOCS flag.

--no-gpgchecks

Skip checking GPG signatures on packages (if RPM policy allows that).

--no-plugins

Disable all plugins.

-q, --quiet

In combination with a non-interactive command, shows just the relevant content. Suppresses messages notifying about the current state or actions of DNF5.

--refresh

Force refreshing metadata before running the command.

--repo=REPO_ID,...

Enable just specified repositories.
This is a list option which can be specified multiple times.
Accepted values are ids, or a glob of ids.

--repofrompath=REPO_ID,REPO_PATH

Specify a repository to add to the repositories only for this run. Can be used multiple times.

The new repository id is specified by REPO_ID and its baseurl by REPO_PATH. Variables in both values are substituted before creating the repo.

The configuration of the new repository can be adjusted using options --setopt=REPO_ID.option=value.

If you want only packages from this repository to be available, combine this option with --repo=REPO_ID switch.

--releasever=RELEASEVER

Override the value of the distribution release in configuration files.

This can affect cache paths, values in configuration files and mirrorlist URLs.

--setopt=[REPO_ID.]OPTION=VALUE

Override a configuration option from the configuration file.

The REPO_ID parameter is used to override options for repositories.

Values for the options like excludepkgs, includepkgs, installonlypkgs and tsflags are appended to the original value, they do not override it. However, specifying an empty value (e.g. --setopt=tsflags=) will clear the option.

--setvar=VAR_NAME=VALUE

Override a DNF5 variable value, like arch, releasever, etc.

--show-new-leaves

Show newly installed leaf packages and packages that became leaves after a transaction.

--use-host-config: Use configuration files and variable definitions from the host system rather than the installroot.

See dnf5-installroot(7) for more info.

--version: Display the version of the dnf5 application and libdnf5 library, along with successfully loaded plugins and their versions, and then exit.
-y, --assumeyes: Automatically answer yes for all questions.
-x PACKAGE-SPEC,..., --exclude=PACKAGE-SPEC,...: Exclude packages specified in PACKAGE-SPEC arguments from the transaction.

This is a list option.

Metadata Synchronization

Correct operation of DNF5 depends on having an access to up-to-date data from the all enabled repositories, but contacting remote mirrors on every operation considerably slows it down and costs bandwidth for both the client and the repository provider. The metadata_expire repository configuration option is used by DNF5 to determine whether a particular local copy of repository data is due to be re-synced. It is crucial that the repository providers set the option well, namely to a value where it is guaranteed that if particular metadata was available in time T on the server, then all packages it references will still be available for download from the server in time T + metadata_expire.

To further reduce the bandwidth load, some of the commands where having up-to-date metadata is not critical (e.g. the group list command) do not look at whether a repository is expired and whenever any version of it is locally available to the user’s account, it will be used.

Refer to the dnf5-caching(7) for more info regarding metadata and packages caching.

Configuration Files Replacement Policy

The updated packages could replace the old modified configuration files with the new ones or keep the older files. Neither of the files are actually replaced. To the conflicting ones RPM gives additional suffix to the origin name. Which file should maintain the true name after transaction is not controlled by package manager, but is specified by each package itself, following packaging guideline.

Exit Codes

The dnf5 command in general exits with the following return values:

0: Operation was successful.
1: An error occurred during processing of the command.
2: An error occurred during parsing the arguments.

Other exit codes could be returned by the specific command itself, see its documentation for more info.

Files

Cache Files: /var/cache/libdnf5/
Main Configuration: /etc/dnf/dnf.conf
Repository Configuration: /etc/yum.repos.d/
Repository Persistence: /var/lib/dnf/
System State: /usr/lib/sysimage/libdnf5/