deb-postinst(5)

deb-postinst5

Package post-installation maintainer script

Usage

DEBIAN/postinst

Overview

A package can perform several post-installation actions via maintainer scripts, by including an executable postinst file in its control archive (i.e. DEBIAN/postinst during package creation).

The script can be called in the following ways:

postinst configure old-version

After the package was installed.

postinst triggered "trigger-name..."

After the package was triggered. The list of space-separated trigger-names is passed as the second argument.

old-postinst abort-upgrade new-version

If prerm fails during upgrade or fails on failed-upgrade.

old-postinst abort-remove

If prerm fails during remove.

postinst abort-deconfigure in-favour new-package new-version
[ removing old-package old-version ]

If prerm fails during deconfigure in-favour of a package.

postinst abort-remove in-favour new-package new-version

If prerm fails during remove in-favour for replacement due to conflict.

Releases

6 releases since Debian 9 (Stretch); the text changed 5 times.

  1. 9
  2. 10
  3. 11
  4. 12
  5. 13
  6. Arch

From dpkg 1.23.11-1 in Arch Linux 2026-11-01. Parsed by carta from the page's man source.