45 Zypper Commands to Manage ‘Suse’ Linux Package Management

SUSE (Software and System Entwicklung (Germany) meaning Software and System Development, in English) Linux lies on top of Linux Kernel brought by Novell. SUSE comes in two pack. One of them is called OpenSUSE, which is freely available (free as in speech as well as free as in wine). It is a community driven project packed with latest application support, the latest stable release of OpenSUSE Linux is 13.2.

The other is SUSE Linux Enterprise which is a commercial Linux Distribution designed specially for enterprise and production. SUSE Linux Enterprise edition comes with a variety of Enterprise Applications and features suited for production environment, the latest stable release of SUSE Linux Enterprise Edition is 12.

You may like to check the detailed installation instruction of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server at:

1. Installation of SUSE Linux Enterprise Server 12

Zypper and YaST are the Package Manager for SUSE Linux, which works on top of RPM.

YaST which stands for Yet another Setup Tool is a tool that works on OpenSUSE and SUSE Enterprise edition to administer, setup and configure SUSE Linux.

Zypper is the command line interface of ZYpp package manager for installing, removing and updating SUSE. ZYpp is the package management engine that powers both Zypper and YaST.

Here in this article we will see Zypper in action, which will be installing, updating, removing and doing every other thing a package manager can do. Here we go…

Important : Remember all these command are meant for system wide changes hence must be run as root, else the command will fail.

Getting Basic Help with Zypper

1. Run zypper without any option, will give you a list of all global options and commands.

# zypper
Usage:
zypper [--global-options]

2. To get help on a specific command say ‘in’ (install), run the below commands.

# zypper help in
OR
# zypper help install
install (in) [options] <capability|rpm_file_uri> ...
Install packages with specified capabilities or RPM files with specified
location. A capability is NAME[.ARCH][OP], where OP is one
of <, <=, =, >=, >.
Command options:
--from <alias|#|URI>    Select packages from the specified repository.
-r, --repo <alias|#|URI>    Load only the specified repository.
-t, --type            Type of package (package, patch, pattern, product, srcpackage).
Default: package.
-n, --name                  Select packages by plain name, not by capability.
-C, --capability            Select packages by capability.
-f, --force                 Install even if the item is already installed (reinstall),
downgraded or changes vendor or architecture.
--oldpackage            Allow to replace a newer item with an older one.
Handy if you are doing a rollback. Unlike --force
it will not enforce a reinstall.
--replacefiles          Install the packages even if they replace files from other,
already installed, packages. Default is to treat file conflicts
as an error. --download-as-needed disables the fileconflict check.
......

3. Search for a package (say gnome-desktop) before installing.

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