DNF command on CentOS 8

In this tutorial, we review DNF Command on CentOS 8. DNF stands for Dandified YUM is a software package manager for RPM-based Linux distributions. It is used to install, update and remove packages in the CentOS operating system.

It is the default package manager of CentOS8. DNF is the next-generation version of YUM and intended to be the replacement for YUM in RPM-based systems. DNF is powerful and has robust features than you’ll find in yum. DNF makes it easy to maintain groups of packages and capable of automatically resolving dependency issues.

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Table of Contents

DNF command on CentOS 8

Point: For this tutorial you need CentOS 8 with root privileges.

Install DNF

By default, DNF Command is pre-installed in CentOS 8. If not installed, you can install it by running the following command:

yum install -y dnf

next, you can check the version of DNF command on CentOS 8 with this command:

dnf --version

after type the version command, you see output like this:

4.0.9    Installed: dnf-0:4.0.9.2-5.el8.noarch at Friday 04 October 2019 05:27:09 AM GMT    Built    : CentOS Buildsys <[email protected]> at Monday 13 May 2019 07:35:13 PM GMT    Installed: rpm-0:4.14.2-9.el8.x86_64 at Friday 04 October 2019 05:20:17 AM GMT    Built    : CentOS Buildsys <[email protected]> at Saturday 11 May 2019 02:04:19 AM GMT

List Installed and Available Packages with DNF

DNF command on CentOS 8 has some benefits and you can list all the installed packages on your system with the following command:

dnf list installed

After type the list command, you should see all the installed packages in the following output:

Installed Packages  NetworkManager.x86_64                 1:1.14.0-14.el8                                        @anaconda  NetworkManager-config-server.noarch   1:1.14.0-14.el8                                        @anaconda  NetworkManager-libnm.x86_64           1:1.14.0-14.el8                                        @anaconda  NetworkManager-team.x86_64            1:1.14.0-14.el8                                        @anaconda  NetworkManager-tui.x86_64             1:1.14.0-14.el8                                        @anaconda  PackageKit.x86_64                     1.1.12-2.el8                                           @AppStream  PackageKit-glib.x86_64                1.1.12-2.el8                                           @AppStream  acl.x86_64                            2.2.53-1.el8                                           @anaconda  adcli.x86_64                          0.8.2-2.el8                                            @anaconda  at.x86_64                             3.1.20-11.el8                                          @anaconda  attr.x86_64                           2.4.48-3.el8                                           @anaconda  audit.x86_64                          3.0-0.10.20180831git0047a6c.el8                        @anaconda  audit-libs.x86_64                     3.0-0.10.20180831git0047a6c.el8                        @anaconda  authselect.x86_64                     1.0-13.el8                                             @anaconda  authselect-compat.x86_64              1.0-13.el8                                             @AppStream  authselect-libs.x86_64                1.0-13.el8                                             @anaconda  avahi-libs.x86_64                     0.7-19.el8                                             @anaconda  basesystem.noarch                     11-5.el8                                               @anaconda

also you can list all installed and available packages with the following command:

dnf list

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Search and Install Package with DNF Command

You can search any package you want to install with the following command:

dnf search httpd

You can now install the httpd package with the following command:

dnf install httpd

To reinstall the package httpd, run the following command:

dnf reinstall httpd

You can also see details of package httpd with the following command:

dnf info httpd

In some cases, you will require to download the packages without installing them. You can download a specific package with the following command:

dnf download httpd

Update System Packages with DNF

you can check updates for all the system packages on your system with the following command:

dnf check-update

You can now update all the packages installed in your system with the following command:

dnf update

Or if you need update specific package you can use the following command:

dnf update httpd

List DNF Repositories

dnf repolist all

Now, list only enabled repositories on the system with the following command:

dnf repolist

Remove Packages with DNF command

You can remove any unwanted package from your system with the following command:

dnf remove httpd

Next, remove unwanted dependencies installed with the package httpd by running the following command:

dnf autoremove

You can clean all the cached packages with the following command:

dnf clean all

You can also remove the group package with the following command:

dnf groupremove 'System Tools'

Conclusion

In the above tutorial, we learned how to manage packages with the DNF command on CentOS 8 operating system. If you need any information about centos 8, you can use compare CentOS 7 and CentOS 8 articles.