Comments on: Display The List Of Recently Installed Packages By Date On Ubuntu

By: happynix

happynix — Thu, 18 Nov 2010 15:29:36 +0000

apt-mark showauto >/tmp/auto.pkgs
## ASSUMING your dpkg Logs go back to the initial machine install (May NOT work across dist-upgrades)
## Create a full dpkg timeline log
cp /dev/null /tmp/dpkg.full
for LOG in $(ls -rt /var/log/dpkg.log.[0-9].gz /var/log/dpkg.log.1[0-9].gz)
do
test -e $LOG && gunzip -c $LOG>> /tmp/dpkg.full
done
for LOG in $(ls -rt /var/log/dpkg.log /var/log/dpkg.log.[0-9] /var/log/dpkg.log.1[0-9])
do
test -e $LOG && cat $LOG >>/tmp/dpkg.full
done

awk -v initialinstall=1 '
/ install grub-pc / {initialinstall = 0; next;}
/ install / {if ( initialinstall == 0) print $4;}
' /tmp/dpkg.full | grep -vf /tmp/auto.pkgs >~/iInstalled.pkgs

By: DC

DC — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 03:42:09 +0000

Also: http://mavior.eu/apt-log/

By: Peter L Collins

Peter L Collins — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 20:25:46 +0000

The Synaptics tip is a good one. I rarely do an active investigation of all the options in the packages I use – even those I use frequently! Thanks.

By: Watching The Net

Watching The Net — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 15:27:46 +0000

@Wodin

Old habits are hard break Thanks for the tip with grep.

By: Wodin

Wodin — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 10:14:08 +0000

Useful, but you have a UUoC (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cat_(Unix)#Useless_use_of_cat)

Also, no need to use backslashes to quote the spaces around "install":

grep " install " /var/log/dpkg.log

By: Watching The Net

Watching The Net — Sat, 13 Jun 2009 00:18:25 +0000

@Adam Williamson – thanks for spotting the error. I have corrected it.

Also, nice tip for using rpm to list packages by installation date.

By: Adam Williamson

Adam Williamson — Fri, 12 Jun 2009 23:50:42 +0000

You've got a typo in your last command – /vat for /var.

On RPM-based distros:

rpm -qa –last

gives you the list of all packages sorted by installation date. You can chop it up with head and tail to just look at a bit of it (e.g. rpm -qa –last | head -50 will show you the last 50 installed packages).