Changes in DNF CLI compared to YUM
--skip-broken
For install command:
The --skip-broken
option is an alias for --setopt=strict=0
. Both options could be used
with DNF to skip all unavailable packages or packages with broken dependencies given to DNF
without raising an error causing the whole operation to fail. This behavior can be set as default
in dnf.conf file. See strict conf option.
For upgrade command:
The semantics that were supposed to trigger in YUM with --skip-broken
are now set for plain
dnf update
as a default. There is no need to use --skip-broken
with the dnf upgrade
command. To use only the latest versions of packages in transactions, there is the --best
command line switch.
Update and Upgrade Commands are the Same
Invoking dnf update
or dnf upgrade
, in all their forms, has the same
effect in DNF, with the latter being preferred. In YUM yum upgrade
was
exactly like yum --obsoletes update
.
clean_requirements_on_remove
on by default
The clean_requirements_on_remove switch is on by default in DNF. It can thus be confusing to compare the “remove” operation results between DNF and YUM as by default DNF is often going to remove more packages.
No resolvedep
command
The YUM version of this command is maintained for legacy reasons only. The user
can just use dnf provides
to find out what package provides a particular file.
No deplist
command
An alternative to the YUM deplist
command to find out dependencies of a package
is dnf repoquery --deplist
using repoquery command.
Note
Alternatively there is a YUM compatibility support where
yum deplist
is alias for dnf repoquery --deplist
command
Excludes and repo excludes apply to all operations
YUM only respects excludes during installs and upgrades. DNF extends this to all
operations, among others erasing and listing. If you e.g. want to see a list of
all installed python-f*
packages but not any of the Flask packages, the
following will work:
dnf -x '*flask*' list installed 'python-f*'
The include
option has been removed
Inclusion of other configuration files in the main configuration file is no longer supported.
dnf provides /bin/<file>
is not fully supported
After UsrMove there’s no
directory /bin
on Fedora systems and no files get installed there,
/bin
is only a symlink created by the filesystem
package to point to
/usr/bin
. Resolving the symlinks to their real path would only give the
user a false sense that this works, while in fact provides requests using globs
such as:
dnf provides /b*/<file>
will fail still (as they do in YUM now). To find what provides a particular binary, use the actual path for binaries on Fedora:
dnf provides /usr/bin/<file>
overwrite_groups
dropped, comps functions acting as if always disabled
This config option has been dropped. When DNF sees several groups with the same group ID it merges the groups’ contents together.
mirrorlist_expire
dropped
To simplify things for the user, DNF uses metadata_expire
for both expiring
metadata and the mirrorlist file (which is a kind of metadata itself).
metalink not recognized in the mirrorlist
repo option
The following part of yum.conf(5)
no longer applies for the mirrorlist
option:
As a special hack if the mirrorlist URL contains the word “metalink” then the value of mirrorlist is copied to metalink (if metalink is not set).
The relevant repository configuration files have been fixed to respect this, see the related Fedora bug 948788.
alwaysprompt
dropped
Unsupported to simplify the configuration.
upgrade_requirements_on_install
dropped
Dropping this config option with blurry semantics simplifies the
configuration. DNF behaves as if this was disabled. If the user wanted to
upgrade everything to the latest version she’d simply use dnf upgrade
.
dnf history rollback
check dropped
Since DNF tolerates the use of other package managers, it is possible that not
all changes to the RPMDB are stored in the history of transactions. Therefore, DNF
does not fail if such a situation is encountered and thus the force
option
is not needed anymore.
Packages replacement without yum swap
Time after time one needs to remove an installed package and replace it with a different one, providing the same capabilities while other packages depending on these capabilities stay installed. Without (transiently) breaking consistency of the package database this can be done by performing the remove and the install in one transaction. The common way to set up such a transaction in DNF is to use dnf shell
or use the --allowerasing
switch.
E.g. say you want to replace A
(providing P
) with B (also providing P
, conflicting with A
) without deleting C
(which requires P
) in the process. Use:
dnf --allowerasing install B
This command is equal to yum swap A B
.
DNF provides swap command but only dnf swap A B
syntax is supported
Dependency processing details are not shown in the CLI
During its depsolving phase, YUM outputs lines similar to:
---> Package rubygem-rhc.noarch 0:1.16.9-1.fc19 will be an update
--> Processing Dependency: rubygem-net-ssh-multi >= 1.2.0 for package: rubygem-rhc-1.16.9-1.fc19.noarch
DNF does not output information like this. The technical reason is that depsolver below DNF always considers all dependencies for update candidates and the output would be very long. Secondly, even in YUM this output gets confusing very quickly especially for large transactions and so does more harm than good.
See the related Fedora bug 1044999.
dnf provides
complies with the YUM documentation of the command
When one executes:
yum provides sandbox
YUM applies extra heuristics to determine what the user meant by sandbox
, for instance it sequentially prepends entries from the PATH
environment variable to it to see if it matches a file provided by some package. This is an undocumented behavior that DNF does not emulate. Just typically use:
dnf provides /usr/bin/sandbox
or even:
dnf provides '*/sandbox'
to obtain similar results.
Bandwidth limiting
DNF supports the throttle
and bandwidth
options familiar from YUM.
Contrary to YUM, when multiple downloads run simultaneously the total
downloading speed is throttled. This was not possible in YUM since
downloaders ran in different processes.
installonlypkgs
config option
Compared to YUM, DNF appends list values from the installonlypkgs
config option to DNF defaults, where YUM overwrites the defaults by option values.
The usage of Delta RPM files
The boolean deltarpm
option controls whether delta RPM files are used. Compared to YUM, DNF does not support deltarpm_percentage
and instead chooses some optimal value of DRPM/RPM ratio to decide whether using deltarpm makes sense in the given case.
Handling .srpm files and non-existent packages
DNF will terminate early with an error if a command is executed requesting an installing operation on a local .srpm
file:
$ dnf install fdn-0.4.17-1.fc20.src.rpm tour-4-6.noarch.rpm
Error: Will not install a source rpm package (fdn-0.4.17-1.fc20.src).
The same applies for package specifications that do not match any available package.
YUM will only issue a warning in this case and continue installing the “tour” package. The rationale behind the result in DNF is that a program should terminate with an error if it can not fulfill the CLI command in its entirety.
Promoting package to install to a package that obsoletes it
DNF will not magically replace a request for installing package X
to installing package Y
if Y
obsoletes X
. YUM does this if its obsoletes
config option is enabled but the behavior is not properly documented and can be harmful.
See the related Fedora bug 1096506 and guidelines for renaming and obsoleting packages in Fedora.
Behavior of --installroot
option
DNF offers more predictable behavior of installroot. DNF handles the path differently
from the --config
command-line option, where this path is always related to the host
system (YUM combines this path with installroot). Reposdir is also handled slightly
differently, if one path of the reposdirs exists inside of installroot, then
repos are strictly taken from installroot (YUM tests each path from reposdir
separately and use installroot path if existed). See the detailed description for
--installroot option.
Different prompt after transaction table
DNF doesn’t provide download functionality after displaying transaction table. It only asks user whether to continue with transaction or not. If one wants to download packages, they can use the ‘download’ command.
List command shows all repo alternatives
DNF lists all packages from all repos, which means there can be duplicates package names (with different repo name). This is due to providing users possibility to choose preferred repo.
yum-langpacks
subcommands have been removed
Translations became part of core DNF and it is no longer necessary to manage individual language packs.
Following sub-commands were removed:
langavailable
langinstall
langremove
langlist
langinfo
Changes in DNF plugins compared to YUM plugins
Original YUM tool |
DNF command/option |
Package |
|
dnf repoquery |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
option in |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Plugins that have not been ported yet:
yum-plugin-filter-data
,
yum-plugin-keys
,
yum-plugin-list-data
,
yum-plugin-protectbase
,
yum-plugin-ps
,
yum-plugin-puppetverify
,
yum-plugin-refresh-updatesd
,
yum-plugin-rpm-warm-cache
,
yum-plugin-upgrade-helper
,
yum-plugin-verify
Feel free to file an RFE for missing functionality if you need it.
Changes in DNF plugins compared to YUM utilities
All ported YUM tools are now implemented as DNF plugins.
Original YUM tool |
New DNF command |
Package |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
dnf download –resolve –alldeps |
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Detailed table for package-cleanup
replacement:
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
yum-updateonboot and yum-cron
DNF does not have a direct replacement of yum-updateonboot and yum-cron commands.
However, the similar result can be achieved by dnf automatic
command (see DNF Automatic).
You can either use the shortcut:
$ systemctl enable --now dnf-automatic-install.timer
Or set apply_updates
option of /etc/dnf/automatic.conf
to True and use generic timer unit:
$ systemctl enable --now dnf-automatic.timer
The timer in both cases is activated 1 hour after the system was booted up and then repetitively once every 24 hours. There is also a random delay on these timers set to 5 minutes. These values can be tweaked via dnf-automatic*.timer
config files located in the /usr/lib/systemd/system/
directory.
Utilities that have not been ported yet
repo-rss
,
show-changed-rco
,
show-installed
,
verifytree
,
yum-groups-manager
Take a look at the FAQ about YUM to DNF migration. Feel free to file an RFE for missing functionality if you need it.