Ubuntu – Get the list of installed packages with install time, date and vendor details with dpkg-query command

dpkgpackage-management

I am trying to get package name with version, splitted package and version, vendor of that package, install time and date using:

dpkg-query -W -f='${Package}-${version} ${package} ${version} ${Maintainer} ${installtime}\n'

But I got package name with version, splitted package and version, vendor of that package. I was not able to retrieve install time and date.

How can I get package install time and date with the above query?

Best Answer

dpkg-query does not have any field option to show date/time of installation. The other way of saying this is that dpkg does not store this information. Under the hood, dpkg-query uses various files in /var/lib/dpkg/ to get the information.

Here are the available field names:

Architecture
Bugs
Conffiles (internal)
Config-Version (internal)
Conflicts
Breaks
Depends
Description
Enhances
Essential
Filename (internal, front-end related)
Homepage
Installed-Size
MD5sum (internal, front-end related)
MSDOS-Filename (internal, front-end related)
Maintainer
Origin
Package
Pre-Depends
Priority
Provides
Recommends
Replaces
Revision (obsolete)
Section
Size (internal, front-end related)
Source
Status (internal)
Suggests
Tag (usually not in .deb but in repository Packages files)
Triggers-Awaited (internal)
Triggers-Pending (internal)
Version

And some virtual fields too:

binary:Package
binary:Summary
db:Status-Abbrev
source:Package
source:Version

Check man dpkg-query to get a broader idea.

Note that, you can look at /var/log/dpkg.log* for the installation date/time of packages. Also note that, if your package is installed by apt-get (or brothers), you can look at the apt history files, /var/log/apt/history.log*, too.

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