How can I check if a package is installed and install it if not?

Question

To check if packagename was installed, type:

dpkg -s <packagename>

You can also use dpkg-query that has a neater output for your purpose, and accepts wild cards, too.

dpkg-query -l <packagename>

To find what package owns the command, try:

dpkg -S `which <command>`

For further details, see article Find out if package is installed in Linux and dpkg cheat sheet.

To be a little more explicit, here's a bit of Bash script that checks for a package and installs it if required. Of course, you can do other things upon finding that the package is missing, such as simply exiting with an error code.

REQUIRED_PKG="some-package"
PKG_OK=$(dpkg-query -W --showformat='${Status}\n' $REQUIRED_PKG|grep "install ok installed")
echo Checking for $REQUIRED_PKG: $PKG_OK
if [ "" = "$PKG_OK" ]; then
  echo "No $REQUIRED_PKG. Setting up $REQUIRED_PKG."
  sudo apt-get --yes install $REQUIRED_PKG
fi

If the script runs within a GUI (e.g., it is a Nautilus script), you'll probably want to replace the 'sudo' invocation with a 'gksudo' one.

This one-liner returns 1 (installed) or 0 (not installed) for the 'nano' package...

$(dpkg-query -W -f='${Status}' nano 2>/dev/null | grep -c "ok installed")

even if the package does not exist or is not available.

The example below installs the 'nano' package if it is not installed...

if [ $(dpkg-query -W -f='${Status}' nano 2>/dev/null | grep -c "ok installed") -eq 0 ];
then
  apt-get install nano;
fi

dpkg-query --showformat='${db:Status-Status}'

This produces a small output string which is unlikely to change and is easy to compare deterministically without grep:

pkg=hello
status="$(dpkg-query -W --showformat='${db:Status-Status}' "$pkg" 2>&1)"
if [ ! $? = 0 ] || [ ! "$status" = installed ]; then
  sudo apt install $pkg
fi

The $? = 0 check is needed because if you've never installed a package before, and after you remove certain packages such as hello, dpkg-query exits with status 1 and outputs to stderr:

dpkg-query: no packages found matching hello

instead of outputting not-installed. The 2>&1 captures that error message too when it comes preventing it from going to the terminal.

For multiple packages:

pkgs='hello certbot'
install=false
for pkg in $pkgs; do
  status="$(dpkg-query -W --showformat='${db:Status-Status}' "$pkg" 2>&1)"
  if [ ! $? = 0 ] || [ ! "$status" = installed ]; then
    install=true
    break
  fi
done
if "$install"; then
  sudo apt install $pkgs
fi

The possible statuses are documented in man dpkg-query as:

   n = Not-installed
   c = Config-files
   H = Half-installed
   U = Unpacked
   F = Half-configured
   W = Triggers-awaiting
   t = Triggers-pending
   i = Installed

The single letter versions are obtainable with db:Status-Abbrev, but they come together with the action and error status, so you get 3 characters and would need to cut it.

So I think it is reliable enough to rely on the uncapitalized statuses (Config-files vs config-files) not changing instead.

dpkg -s exit status

This unfortunately doesn't do what most users want:

pkgs='qemu-user pandoc'
if ! dpkg -s $pkgs >/dev/null 2>&1; then
  sudo apt-get install $pkgs
fi

because for some packages, e.g. certbot, doing:

sudo apt install certbot
sudo apt remove certbot

leaves certbot in state config-files, which means that config files were left in the machine. And in that state, dpkg -s still returns 0, because the package metadata is still kept around so that those config files can be handled more nicely.

To actually make dpkg -s return 1 as desired, --purge would be needed:

sudo apt remove --purge certbot

which actually moves it into not-installed/dpkg-query: no packages found matching.

Note that only certain packages leave config files behind. A simpler package like hello goes directly from installed to not-installed without --purge.

Tested on Ubuntu 20.10.

Python apt package

There is a pre-installed Python 3 package called apt in Ubuntu 18.04 which exposes an Python apt interface!

A script that checks if a package is installed and installs it if not can be seen at: How to install a package using the python-apt API

Here is a copy for reference:

#!/usr/bin/env python
# aptinstall.py

import apt
import sys

pkg_name = "libjs-yui-doc"

cache = apt.cache.Cache()
cache.update()
cache.open()

pkg = cache[pkg_name]
if pkg.is_installed:
    print "{pkg_name} already installed".format(pkg_name=pkg_name)
else:
    pkg.mark_install()

    try:
        cache.commit()
    except Exception, arg:
        print >> sys.stderr, "Sorry, package installation failed [{err}]".format(err=str(arg))

Check if an executable is in PATH instead

See: How can I check if a program exists from a Bash script?

See also

• https://askubuntu.com/questions/165951/dpkg-get-selections-shows-packages-marked-deinstall
• https://askubuntu.com/questions/423355/how-do-i-check-if-a-package-is-installed-on-my-server

Ubuntu added its "Personal Package Archive" (PPA), and PPA packages have a different result.

1. A native Debian repository package is not installed:

   ~$ dpkg-query -l apache-perl
   ~$ echo $?
   1
   

2. A PPA package registered on the host and installed:

   ~$ dpkg-query -l libreoffice
   ~$ echo $?
   0
   

3. A PPA package registered on the host, but not installed:

   ~$ dpkg-query -l domy-ce
   ~$ echo $?
   0
   ~$ sudo apt-get remove domy-ce
   [sudo] password for user:
   Reading package lists... Done
   Building dependency tree
   Reading state information... Done
   Package domy-ce is not installed, so not removed
   0 upgraded, 0 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded.
   

Also posted on: Test if a package is installed in APT

UpAndAdam wrote:

However you can't simply rely on return codes here for scripting

In my experience you can rely on dkpg's exit codes.

The return code of dpkg -s is 0 if the package is installed and 1 if it's not, so the simplest solution I found was:

dpkg -s <pkg-name> 2>/dev/null >/dev/null || sudo apt-get -y install <pkg-name>

It works fine for me...

This seems to work pretty well.

$ sudo dpkg-query -l | grep <some_package_name> | wc -l

• It either returns 0 if not installed or some number > 0 if installed.