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Help with scripting APT / dpkg in Debian 4

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Old 10-20-2008
Help with scripting APT / dpkg in Debian 4
Hello,

I am attempting to write a (bash) shell script that will do some basic reporting based on the APT utilities and dpkg.

I need the following in the report:
Packages installed
(COLUMNS=200 dpkg -l | grep '/^ii/' > packages_installed)

Packages not installed
I suppose that I can do
COLUMNS=200 dpkg -l > packages_available
and then use cmp or diff to print a list of the differences which should just be the packages not installed

Packages with security updates
I'm drawing a blank on this one, maybe restricting sources to
deb Debian -- Security Information stable/updates main
and printing the output

Packages with updates
I think it's just
apt-get -u upgrade > packages_updates

Packages with new versions (including the distro)
apt-cache show?

The script should then print out in a legible form the different categories from the files created. I realize that there are some GUI's out there that do basically the same thing but this will run on servers. Ideally it should be dependent on the "standard" apt utilities.

Thanks for any input!
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LEARN ABOUT DEBIAN

apt-show-source

APT-SHOW-SOURCE(1)					User Contributed Perl Documentation					APT-SHOW-SOURCE(1)

NAME

       apt-show-source - Lists source-packages.

DESCRIPTION

       This program parses the APT lists for source packages and the dpkg status file and then lists every package with a higher version number
       than the one installed.

       It may prove very useful if the "deb" entries in your APT sources.list point to stable and the "deb-src" entries point to unstable. With
       this program you are easily able to find out if there is a newer version of eg. Program XXXX in unstable.

COMMAND LINE PARAMETERS

       Optional command line parameters are the DPKG Status file to use, the path to APT's list files and a package name.  There are also options
       to display: all source-packages, verbose messages, version-only and command-line help.

OPTIONS

       -stf FILE, --status-file=FILE

       Reads installed packages from FILE instead of /var/lib/dpkg/status.

       -ld DIRECTORY, --list-dir=DIRECTORY

       DIRECTORY specifies the path to APT's list files, defaults to /var/lib/apt/lists/.

       -p PACKAGE, --package=PACKAGE

       Prints out the installed-package/source-package version Information for PACKAGE.

       --version-only

       Prints version only if used together with --package.

       -a, --all

       Prints out all available source-packages with version.

       -v, --verbose

       Prints out verbose messages.

       -h, --help

       Prints out command-line help.

AUTHOR

       Dennis Schoen, dennis@debian.org

SEE ALSO

       apt(1), dpkg(1)

perl v5.8.1							    2003-10-12							APT-SHOW-SOURCE(1)