Pkg

Application Management
pkg	Software Station	Update Station	Ports	Applications
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Introduction

pkg is the FreeBSD package management tools, offering many features that make dealing with binary packages faster and easier. See pkg(8)

Package Benefits

• A compressed package tarball is typically smaller than the compressed tarball containing the source code for the application.

• Packages do not require compilation time. For large applications, such as Mozilla, KDE, or GNOME, this can be important on a slow system.

• Packages do not require any understanding of the process involved in compiling software on FreeBSD.

Overview About PKG Commands

Command	Explanation
help command	Display usage information of the specified command.
add	Install a package from either a local source or a remote one. When installing from remote source you need to specify the proto- col to use when fetching the package. Currently supported protocols are FTP, HTTP and HTTPS. annotate: Add, modify or delete tag-value style annotations on packages.
alias	display configured aliases
annotate	Add, modify or delete arbitrary annotations from packages
audit	Audit installed packages against known vulnerabilities.
autoremove	Delete packages which were automatically installed as dependen- cies and are not required any more.
backup	Dump the local package database to a file specified on the command-line.
bootstrap	This is for compatibility with the pkg(7) bootstrapper. If pkg is already installed, nothing is done. If invoked with the -f flag an attempt will be made to reinstall pkg from remote repository.
check	Sanity checks installed packages.
clean	Clean the local cache of fetched remote packages.
config	retrieve the value of a given configuration option
convert	Convert to and from the old pkg_add(1) format.
create	Create a package, a utility for creating software package distributions.
delete	Delete a package from the database and the system.
fetch	Fetch packages from a remote repository.
info	Display information about installed packages.
install	Install a package from a remote package repository. If a package is found in more than one remote repository, then installation happens from the first one. Downloading a package is tried from each package repository in turn, until the package is successfully fetched.
lock	Prevent modification or deletion of a package, lock or unlock packages.
plugins	List the available plugins.
query	Query information about installed packages.
register	Register a package in the database.
repo	Create a local package repository for remote usage.
rquery	Query information for remote repositories.
search	Search for the given pattern in the remote package repositories.
set	Modify information in the installed database.
shell	Open a SQLite shell to the local or remote database. Extreme care should be taken when using this command.
shlib	Displays which packages link to a specific shared library.
stats	Display package database statistics.
unlock	Unlocks packages, allowing them to be modified or deleted.
update	Update the available remote repositories as listed in /usr/local/etc/pkg/repos/GhostBSD.conf
updating	Display UPDATING entries of installed packages.
upgrade	Upgrade a package to a newer version.
version	Summarize installed versions of packages.
which	Query the database for package(s) that installed a specific file.
See also
pkg_printf	family of functions produces output of package data according to a format
pkg_repos()	Takes the address of a pointer to the repository
package repository	format and operation of package repositories used by pkg(8)
pkg.conf	system-wide configuration file for pkg, default location of this file is /usr/local/etc/pkg.conf

Function and Examples

A package can be manipulated with the pkg(8) commands, such as pkg install.

pkg only works with binary packages. By default, pkg uses the binary packages from the GhostBSD package mirrors.

Each pkg command argument is documented in a command-specific manual page. To read the manual page for pkg install, for example, run either of these commands:

# pkg help install

or

# man pkg-install

Installing Packages

To install a binary package use the following command, where packagename is the name of the package to install:

# pkg install packagename

This command uses repository data to determine which version of the software to install and if it has any uninstalled dependencies.

Removing Packages

Packages that are no longer needed can be removed with pkg delete. For example:

# pkg delete packagename

Upgrading Installed Packages

Update the local package repository index

# pkg update

Installed packages can be upgraded to their latest versions by running:

# pkg upgrade

This command will compare the installed versions with those available in the repository catalogue and upgrade them from the repository.

If a kernel has to be upgraded, you have to do a forced upgrade. It is needed that all packages have to be reinstalled, so that all the package are compiled with the right kernel.

# pkg update -f

# pkg upgrade -fy

Not Updating A Package

If you have got an application via the ports system and don't like to change it during pkg upgrade process, do

#pkg lock packagename

To Get Info About An Installed Package

If you like to know if a package is installed and which version, you have to write:

pkg info packagename

Auditing Installed Packages

Software vulnerabilities are regularly discovered in third-party applications. To address this, pkg includes a built-in auditing mechanism. To determine if there are any known vulnerabilities for the software installed on the system, run:

# pkg audit -F

-F,	--fetch	Fetch the database before checking.

Automatically Removing Unused Packages

Removing a package may leave behind dependencies which are no longer required. Unneeded packages that were installed as dependencies (leaf packages) can be automatically detected and removed using:

# pkg autoremove

Repositories

The pkg mirrors are located in:

• in the US: http://pkg.us.ghostbsd.org/stable/FreeBSD:12:amd64/
• in France: http://pkg.fr.ghostbsd.org/stable/FreeBSD:12:amd64/
• in Cynyda: http://pkg.ghostbsd.org/stable/FreeBSD:12:amd64/

To change the mirror go to the file /etc/pkg/GhostBSD.conf and change the URL.
There in it is described as:

• in France: url: "http://pkg.fr.ghostbsd.org/stable/${ABI}/latest",
• in Canada: url: "http://pkg.ca.ghostbsd.org/stable/${ABI}/latest",
• in US: url: "http://pkg.us.ghostbsd.org/stable/${ABI}/latest",

For upgrading your system chose the nearest mirror to your location.

For more Information

Sources:

• FreeBSD Handbook/chapter 4.4. Using pkg for Binary Package Management
• VULTR