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.
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.
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.
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.
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 yumdeplist is alias for dnf repoquery --deplist command
EXCLUDES AND REPO EXCLUDES APPLY TO ALL OPERATIONS
top
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*'
Inclusion of other configuration files in the main configuration file
is no longer supported.
DNF PROVIDES /BIN/<FILE> IS NOT FULLY SUPPORTED
top
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>
Also see related Fedora bugzillas 982947 and 982664.
SKIP_IF_UNAVAILABLE COULD BE ENABLED BY DEFAULT
top
In some distributions DNF is shipped with skip_if_unavailable=True in
the DNF configuration file. The reason for the change is that
third-party repositories can often be unavailable. Without this
setting in the relevant repository configuration file YUM immediately
stops on a repository synchronization error, confusing and bothering
the user.
See the related Fedora bug 984483.
OVERWRITE_GROUPS DROPPED, COMPS FUNCTIONS ACTING AS IF ALWAYS DISABLED
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
top
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.
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.
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.
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 dnfshell 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
top
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
top
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.
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.
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
top
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
top
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 andobsoleting packages in Fedora.
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
This page is part of the dnf (DNF Package Manager) project.
Information about the project can be found at
⟨https://github.com/rpm-software-management/dnf⟩. It is not known how
to report bugs for this man page; if you know, please send a mail to
man-pages@man7.org. This page was obtained from the project's
upstream Git repository
⟨https://github.com/rpm-software-management/dnf.git⟩ on 2020-08-13.
(At that time, the date of the most recent commit that was found in
the repository was 2020-08-04.) If you discover any rendering prob‐
lems in this HTML version of the page, or you believe there is a bet‐
ter 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
4.3.0 Aug 13, 2020 YUM2DNF(8)