HowTo: See Contents of A .DEB Debian / Ubuntu Package File

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To see the contents of a .deb Debian/Ubuntu package file, you can use the dpkg-deb command. Here’s how:

  1. Open a terminal on your Debian or Ubuntu system.
  2. Change to the directory containing the .deb package file. For example, if the package file is in the Downloads directory, run the following command:
cd ~/Downloads
  1. Use the dpkg-deb command to view the contents of the .deb package file. For example, to see the contents of the package file example.deb, run the following command:
dpkg-deb -c example.deb

This will display a list of all the files contained in the package, along with their permissions, ownership, and size.

If you also want to see information about the package itself, such as its name, version, and maintainer, you can use the dpkg-deb command with the -I option. For example:

dpkg-deb -I example.deb

This will display information about the package in addition to its contents.

Note that to view the contents of a .deb package file, you need to have root privileges, so you may need to run these commands with sudo or as the root user.

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