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Hands-on Lab·LPIC-1

dpkg and rpm, the low-level tools

Objectives 102.4 and 102.5 examine Debian and RPM package management separately. This guide installs the same package on both hosts and asks each family the same questions - what is this, what does it contain, which of those files are configuration - then removes it two different ways on Debian to show the difference between remove and purge, which RPM has no equivalent of.

101: Installation and Packages Guide 6 of 33 Beginner

Both package families, because LPI names dpkg and rpm in the objectives themselves. Every output is captured on the host it belongs to.
Server NameIP AddressOSRolesCPURAMHDD
LPIC1-A01192.168.0.76Ubuntu 26.04 LTSDebian-family host - dpkg and apt, which objective 102.4 names2 Core4 GB50 GB
LPIC1-B01192.168.0.77AlmaLinux 10.2RPM-family host - rpm and dnf, which objective 102.5 names2 Core4 GB50 GB

This guide includes

Use this for the low-level half of both packaging objectives. This matters because remove and purge are two verbs on Debian and one on RPM - which is exactly where the two objectives part company.

Before you start

  1. How many packages each machine thinks it has

  2. Installing it, and what the high-level tool adds

  3. Asking each tool what the package is

  4. Which files it owns, and which of those are configuration

  5. Remove against purge, which is where the verbs part company

  6. The RPM side, which has no such distinction

Official sources

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