[Preston] Listing full name of debian installed packages

[Dougie Nisbet]

I asked this question a long time ago on the Debian newsgroup but didn't get 
any response. I know there are a few Debian users in plug, so perhaps someone 
here can help.

The problem I sometimes find is that when I use 'dpkg -l' to browse what I've 
got installed, the output display format truncates the first column and I 
can't get the full package name. I'm usually tidying up and am looking for 
stuff to 'apt-get remove' so this is a bit of nuisance. In the following 
example I'm grepping for kernel to see what old kernel 2.4 stuff I have lying 
around that I could tidy up (I know I can just rm it from /usr/src but that's 
another story. I'm having big nvidia problems at the moment and I'm trying to 
clarify what I have and haven't got installed).

tbird2:~# dpkg -l | grep kernel
ii  iptables       1.2.9-10       Linux kernel 2.4+ iptables administration to
ii  kcmlinuz       3.2.2-1        KDE Frontend for the Linux kernel configurat
ii  kernel-headers 2.4.18-5       Header files related to Linux kernel version
ii  kernel-image-2 10.00.Custom   Linux kernel binary image for version 2.6.5.
ii  kernel-package 8.092          A utility for building Linux kernel related 
ii  kernel-patch-d 1.00.19-2      The Linux Kernel Device Mapper kernel patch
ii  kernel-source- 2.4.18-14.3    Linux kernel source for version 2.4.18
ii  kernel-source- 2.6.5-4        Linux kernel source for version 2.6.5 with D
ii  linux-kernel-h 2.5.999-test7- Linux Kernel Headers for development
ii  module-init-to 3.1-pre5-3     tools for managing Linux kernel modules
ii  nvidia-kernel- 1.0.5336+2     NVIDIA binary kernel module for Linux 2.4.25
ii  nvidia-kernel- 1.0.6106+1     NVIDIA binary kernel module for Linux 2.4.26
ii  nvidia-kernel- 1.0.5336-6+10. NVIDIA binary kernel module for Linux 2.6.5
ii  nvidia-kernel- 1.0.6106-1     NVIDIA binary kernel module common files
ii  nvidia-kernel- 1.0.6106-3     NVIDIA binary kernel module source
tbird2:~# 


As you can see I have lots of nvidia stuff installed but the package names are 
truncated. Perhaps it's possible to do some command line stuff with 
'aptitude' but I've never really got on with aptitude. I can't be the only 
person who runs across this problem so I assume I must be missing something!

Dougie