|
HTML rendering created 2026-01-16 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
|
|
NAME | SYNOPSIS | DESCRIPTION | FORMAT | MEDIA TYPE | SEE ALSO | COLOPHON |
|
|
|
deb(5) dpkg suite deb(5)
deb - Debian binary package format
filename.deb
The .deb format is the Debian binary package file format. It is
understood since dpkg 0.93.76, and is generated by default since
dpkg 1.2.0 and 1.1.1elf (i386/ELF builds).
The format described here is used since Debian 0.93; details of
the old format are described in deb-old(5).
The file is an ar archive with a magic value of !<arch>. Only the
common ar archive format is supported, with no long file name
extensions, but with file names containing an optional trailing
slash, which limits their length to 15 characters (from the 16
allowed). File sizes are limited to 10 ASCII decimal digits,
allowing for up to approximately 9536.74 MiB member files.
The tar archives currently allowed are:
• old-style (v7) format
• pre-POSIX ustar format
• subset of the GNU format
New style long pathnames and long linknames, supported since
dpkg 1.4.1.17; large file metadata since dpkg 1.18.24.
• POSIX ustar format
Long names supported since dpkg 1.15.0.
Unrecognized tar typeflags are considered an error. By default
each tar entry size inside a tar archive is limited to 11 ASCII
octal digits, allowing for up to 8 GiB tar entries. The GNU large
file metadata support permits 95-bit tar entry sizes and negative
timestamps, and 63-bit UID, GID and device numbers, which amounts
to practically unlimited values.
The ar archive is composed of multiple members in a specific
order:
debian-binary
The first required member contains a series of lines,
separated by newlines. Currently only one line is present,
the format version number, 2.0 at the time this manual page
was written. Programs which read new-format archives should
be prepared for the minor number to be increased and new lines
to be present, and should ignore these if this is the case.
If the major number has changed, an incompatible change has
been made and the program should stop. If it has not, then
the program should be able to safely continue, unless it
encounters an unexpected member in the archive (except at the
end), as described below.
control.tar
The second required member is a tar archive containing the
package metadata.
It can use the following compression:
• none (supported since dpkg 1.17.6)
• gzip (with .gz extension)
• xz (with .xz extension, supported since dpkg 1.17.6)
• zstd (with .zst extension, supported since dpkg 1.21.18)
It contains a series of plain files:
control
Mandatory control information, in deb822(5) format.
md5sums
conffiles
triggers
shlibs
symbols
Optional package metadata.
preinst
postinst
prerm
postrm
Optional maintainer scripts.
The control tarball may optionally contain an entry for ‘.’,
the current directory.
data.tar
The third, last required member contains the filesystem as a
tar archive.
It can use the following compression:
• none (supported since dpkg 1.10.24)
• gzip (with .gz extension)
• xz (with .xz extension, supported since dpkg 1.15.6)
• zstd (with .zst extension, supported since dpkg 1.21.18)
• bzip2 (with .bz2 extension, supported since dpkg 1.10.24)
• lzma (with .lzma extension, supported since dpkg 1.13.25)
These members must occur in this exact order. Current
implementations should ignore any additional members after
data.tar. Further members may be defined in the future, and (if
possible) will be placed after these three. Any additional
members that may need to be inserted after debian-binary and
before control.tar or data.tar and which should be safely ignored
by older programs, will have names starting with an underscore,
‘_’.
Those new members which won't be able to be safely ignored will be
inserted before data.tar with names starting with something other
than underscores, or will (more likely) cause the major version
number to be increased.
Current
application/vnd.debian.binary-package
Deprecated
application/x-debian-package
application/x-deb
deb-old(5), dpkg-deb(1), deb-control(5), deb-conffiles(5),
deb-md5sums(5), deb-triggers(5), deb-shlibs(5), deb-symbols(5),
deb-preinst(5), deb-postinst(5), deb-prerm(5), deb-postrm(5).
This page is part of the dpkg (Debian Package Manager) project.
Information about the project can be found at
⟨https://wiki.debian.org/Teams/Dpkg/⟩. If you have a bug report
for this manual page, see
⟨http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/pkgreport.cgi?src=dpkg⟩. This
page was obtained from the project's upstream Git repository ⟨git
clone https://git.dpkg.org/git/dpkg/dpkg.git⟩ on 2026-01-16. (At
that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in
the repository was 2025-12-20.) If you discover any rendering
problems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is
a better or more up-to-date source for the page, or you have
corrections or improvements to the information in this COLOPHON
(which is not part of the original manual page), send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org
1.23.3-2-gade55 2025-12-20 deb(5)
Pages that refer to this page: dpkg(1), dpkg-deb(1), dpkg-name(1), dpkg-split(1), dselect(1), deb-control(5), deb-old(5), deb-split(5), deb-version(7)
|
HTML rendering created 2026-01-16 by Michael Kerrisk, author of The Linux Programming Interface. For details of in-depth Linux/UNIX system programming training courses that I teach, look here. Hosting by jambit GmbH. |
|