1deb(5)                            dpkg suite                            deb(5)
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NAME

6       deb - Debian binary package format
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SYNOPSIS

9       filename.deb
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DESCRIPTION

12       The .deb format is the Debian binary package file format. It is
13       understood since dpkg 0.93.76, and is generated by default since dpkg
14       1.2.0 and 1.1.1elf (i386/ELF builds).
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16       The format described here is used since Debian 0.93; details of the old
17       format are described in deb-old(5).
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FORMAT

20       The file is an ar archive with a magic value of !<arch>.  Only the
21       common ar archive format is supported, with no long file name
22       extensions, but with file names containing an optional trailing slash,
23       which limits their length to 15 characters (from the 16 allowed).  File
24       sizes are limited to 10 ASCII decimal digits, allowing for up to
25       approximately 9536.74 MiB member files.
26
27       The tar archives currently allowed are, the old-style (v7) format, the
28       pre-POSIX ustar format, a subset of the GNU format (new style long
29       pathnames and long linknames, supported since dpkg 1.4.1.17; large file
30       metadata since dpkg 1.18.24), and the POSIX ustar format (long names
31       supported since dpkg 1.15.0).  Unrecognized tar typeflags are
32       considered an error.  Each tar entry size inside a tar archive is
33       limited to 11 ASCII octal digits, allowing for up to 8 GiB tar entries.
34       The GNU large file metadata support permits 95-bit tar entry sizes and
35       negative timestamps, and 63-bit UID, GID and device numbers.
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37       The first member is named debian-binary and contains a series of lines,
38       separated by newlines. Currently only one line is present, the format
39       version number, 2.0 at the time this manual page was written.  Programs
40       which read new-format archives should be prepared for the minor number
41       to be increased and new lines to be present, and should ignore these if
42       this is the case.
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44       If the major number has changed, an incompatible change has been made
45       and the program should stop. If it has not, then the program should be
46       able to safely continue, unless it encounters an unexpected member in
47       the archive (except at the end), as described below.
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49       The second required member is named control.tar.  It is a tar archive
50       containing the package control information, either not compressed
51       (supported since dpkg 1.17.6), or compressed with gzip (with .gz
52       extension) or xz (with .xz extension, supported since 1.17.6), as a
53       series of plain files, of which the file control is mandatory and
54       contains the core control information, the md5sums, conffiles,
55       triggers, shlibs and symbols files contain optional control
56       information, and the preinst, postinst, prerm and postrm files are
57       optional maintainer scripts.  The control tarball may optionally
58       contain an entry for ‘.’, the current directory.
59
60       The third, last required member is named data.tar.  It contains the
61       filesystem as a tar archive, either not compressed (supported since
62       dpkg 1.10.24), or compressed with gzip (with .gz extension), xz (with
63       .xz extension, supported since dpkg 1.15.6), bzip2 (with .bz2
64       extension, supported since dpkg 1.10.24) or lzma (with .lzma extension,
65       supported since dpkg 1.13.25).
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67       These members must occur in this exact order. Current implementations
68       should ignore any additional members after data.tar.  Further members
69       may be defined in the future, and (if possible) will be placed after
70       these three. Any additional members that may need to be inserted after
71       debian-binary and before control.tar or data.tar and which should be
72       safely ignored by older programs, will have names starting with an
73       underscore, ‘_’.
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75       Those new members which won't be able to be safely ignored will be
76       inserted before data.tar with names starting with something other than
77       underscores, or will (more likely) cause the major version number to be
78       increased.
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MEDIA TYPE

81   Current
82       application/vnd.debian.binary-package
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84   Deprecated
85       application/x-debian-package
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87       application/x-deb
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SEE ALSO

90       deb-old(5), dpkg-deb(1), deb-control(5), deb-conffiles(5),
91       deb-md5sums(5), deb-triggers(5), deb-shlibs(5), deb-symbols(5), deb-
92       preinst(5), deb-postinst(5), deb-prerm(5), deb-postrm(5).
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961.21.9                            2022-07-01                            deb(5)
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