DNF5 Package Management Utility

Synopsis

dnf5 [general options] <command> [command-specific 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.
history: Manage transaction history.
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.
replay: Replay stored transactions.
repo: Manage repositories.
repoquery: Search for packages in repositories.
search: Search for packages using keywords.
status: Display summary statistics about installed and available packages, groups and repositories.
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).
deptree: Display a package dependency graph.
needs-restarting: Determine whether the system should be rebooted.
repoclosure: Display a list of unresolved dependencies for repositories.
reposync: Synchronize packages and metadata of a remote DNF repository to a local directory.

General Options

Following options are applicable in the general context for any dnf5 command. These general options can be placed either before or after the command name on the command line. Command-specific options (such as --downloadonly or --skip-broken) are only accepted after the command name. See the individual command’s man page for a list of its specific options.

--assumeno: Automatically answer no for all questions.

--allow-vendor-change: Allow automatic package replacements from different vendors for RPM upgrades or downgrades.
--allow-vendor-change-to=VENDOR: Allow switching packages from any vendor to packages from VENDOR.

Supports globs, can be specified multiple times.

Example: --allow-vendor-change-to='Fedora*' allows switching from any third-party vendor to “Fedora*”.
--allow-vendor-change-from=VENDOR: Allow replacing packages from VENDOR to packages from any vendor.

Supports globs, can be specified multiple times.

Example: --allow-vendor-change-from=myvendor allows switching from myvendor to any other vendor.
--allow-vendor-change-for-pkgs=PKG_NAME,...: Allow vendor changes for packages matching PKG_NAME (both to and from any vendor).

List option. Supports globs, can be specified multiple times.

Example: --allow-vendor-change-for-pkgs='kernel,systemd' allows vendor changes for these packages.

--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 libdnf5 library 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.
--dump-vendor-policies: Print loaded vendor change policies to stdout.

For each policy, its index (numbered from 0), source, and compact format representation are displayed.

Additionally, if allow_vendor_change is enabled, displays a message indicating that packages can be replaced by any vendor and policies are ignored.
--enable-plugin=PLUGIN_NAME,...: Enable specified libdnf5 library 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 Forcearch parameter for more info.

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

Absolute path is required.

See Installroot parameter for more info.

--no-allow-vendor-change: Do not allow automatic package replacements from different vendors for RPM upgrades or downgrades.

The behavior of this option can be fine-tuned with vendor change policy configuration.

See Vendor change policies for more info.

--with-vendor-policy=POLICY: Add a vendor change policy for this run using the compact format.

Can be specified multiple times. Each value defines one policy.

See Compact format for format details.

--clear-vendor-policies: Temporarily remove all vendor change policies for the purpose of the current DNF5 command.

Can be combined with --with-vendor-policy to replace existing policies with custom ones.

Cannot be combined with --allow-vendor-change.

--disable-vendor-policy-source=SOURCE: Temporarily remove vendor change policies whose source matches the specified pattern for the purpose of the current DNF5 command.

This option can be specified multiple times.

Accepted values are source strings, or a glob of source strings.

Cannot be combined with --allow-vendor-change.

Example: --disable-vendor-policy-source="*/test.conf"

--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 OpenPGP signatures on packages (if RPM policy allows that).
--no-plugins: Disable all libdnf5 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.

--color=<color>

Control whether color is used in terminal output. Valid values are always, never and auto (default).

--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 (the releasever variable) in configuration files. This can affect cache paths, values in configuration files and mirrorlist URLs. Whenever releasever is set, releasever_major and releasever_minor will also be set by splitting releasever on the first ..

--releasever-major=RELEASEVER_MAJOR

Override the releasever_major variable, which is usually automatically detected or taken from the part of $releasever before the first .. Does not affect the setting of the releasever variable. Must be specified after --releasever on the command line, otherwise the major part of the --releasever will take precedent.

--releasever-minor=RELEASEVER_MINOR

Override the releasever_minor variable, which is usually automatically detected or taken from the part of $releasever after the first .. Does not affect the setting of the releasever variable. Must be specified after --releasever on the command line, otherwise the minor part of the --releasever will take precedent.

--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.

--skip-file-locks

Skip acquiring file locks, such as the lock on the system repository.

See skip_system_repo_lock for more info.

--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 Installroot parameter 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-N,..., --exclude=PACKAGE-SPEC-N,...: Exclude packages specified in PACKAGE-SPEC-N arguments from the transaction.

This is a list option.

Special Arguments

--: Stop parsing command line options. All remaining arguments will be treated as positional arguments.

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 Caching documentation 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/

Environment

DNF5_FORCE_COLUMNS: Override a terminal width used for rendering progress bars and other tabular data. The value should be a positive integer. If it is unset or invalid, the width will be detected from a terminal device connected to the standard output. If the detection fails, 80 columns will be assumed.
DNF5_FORCE_INTERACTIVE: Override interactivity of the connected standard input/output. Set to 0 to pretend that the input/output is not connected to an interactive terminal and DNF5 should not ask any questions. Set to 1 to force DNF5 to ask questions even if the terminal is non-interactive. See –assumeno and –assumeyes options.
DNF5_PLUGINS_DIR: Override a directory with DNF5 application plugins. Set it to an empty string to disable loading the application plugins.
LIBDNF_PLUGINS_CONFIG_DIR: Override a directory with libdnf5 plugin’s configuration files.
SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH: Specifies a timestamp given as number of seconds since UNIX epoch. When set, transaction timestamps in the history database are set to the specified time instead of the current time. Additionally, packages are ordered to ensure consistent transaction order.

TEMP, TEMPDIR, TMP, TMPDIR

Override a path to a directory for temporary files. The directory must exist. Default value is /tmp.