Fedora DNF

Note

DNF 4 is superseded by dnf5 (Fedora’s default since Fedora 41) but stays maintained for the RHEL 8/9 family; mpm wraps dnf5 as a separate manager.

ID

dnf

Home page

https://github.com/rpm-software-management/dnf

Upstream stars

⭐ 1,380

Last commit

2026-08-07

Version requirement

>= 4, < 5

Platforms

🅱️ BSD · 🐧 Linux · ⨂ Unix

Operations

installed · outdated · orphans · search · install · upgrade · upgrade_all · remove · sync · cleanup · doctor

purl types

pkg:dnf · pkg:rpm

CLI names (lookup order)

dnf · dnf4

Every call

dnf --color=never --quiet <command>

Issues and PRs

📦 manager: rpm-based

Source

meta_package_manager/managers/dnf.py

Fedora’s RPM package manager.

mpm reads the inventory through repoquery rather than the human-facing listing: --userinstalled for packages installed on request (dependencies pulled in automatically are skipped), --upgrades for pending updates and --unneeded for the orphans, each with a --queryformat that joins the fields on a private ___MPM___ delimiter so summaries containing spaces stay splittable. Every call is forced --color=never and --quiet for parseable output.

Note

outdated is the one operation that runs two of those queries. --upgrades answers for available packages, so it describes the upgrade candidate and never the package installed, and repoquery offers no tag for the latter. The installed set is therefore read separately and joined on name and architecture. It is also the one place versions are reported as %{evr}, epoch and release included, since an upgrade may move only the release.

Note

remove runs autoremove, so removing a package also drops the dependencies it leaves orphaned. search matches names only, with no exact or extended mode.

The DNF5 and YUM subclasses reuse everything here, differing only in the binary and forced arguments.

Documentation:

• DNF command reference

• Command equivalences with other managers

What mpm adds to dnf

Through mpm, dnf gains --exact and --extended search, to narrow to exact names or match descriptions.

Bigger still, mpm reaches across every manager at once: mpm installed and mpm outdated cover dnf alongside dnf5, yum, zypper and any other manager you run in one table, mpm upgrade --all updates them together, and mpm sbom exports the whole machine as one bill of materials.

Every mpm command also gains --dry-run and --plan previews, cross-scheme version comparison and purl identifiers. See manager augmentations for how each one is built.

Your dnf commands, in mpm

You already know dnf: each operation maps one-to-one onto mpm, in an interface shared by every manager.

To…	With dnf	With mpm
List what’s installed	dnf repoquery --userinstalled --qf <format>	mpm --dnf installed
List outdated packages	dnf repoquery --installed --qf <format>	mpm --dnf outdated
Search for a package	dnf4 search usd	mpm --dnf search usd
Install a package	sudo dnf --assumeyes install pip	mpm install pkg:dnf/pip
Upgrade one package	sudo dnf --assumeyes upgrade pip	mpm --dnf upgrade pip
Upgrade everything	sudo dnf --assumeyes upgrade	mpm --dnf upgrade --all
Remove a package	sudo dnf --assumeyes remove pip	mpm remove pkg:dnf/pip
List orphaned dependencies	dnf repoquery --unneeded	mpm --dnf orphans
Clear caches	sudo dnf clean all	mpm --dnf cleanup --cache
Run health checks	dnf check	mpm --dnf doctor

Prefix any command above with --dry-run to simulate the underlying manager calls without touching the system: the safe way to watch what mpm would do before trusting it.

Operations

Operation	Supported	Notes
installed	✓
outdated	✓
orphans	✓
search	✓	exact and extended search backfilled by mpm
install	✓
upgrade	✓
upgrade_all	✓
remove	✓	--orphans also drops the package’s orphaned dependencies
sync	✓
cleanup	✓	--orphans runs the system-wide orphan sweep
doctor	✓

Selecting and configuring dnf

Deselect dnf for a single run with --no-dnf, or persist the choice in your configuration:

[mpm]
dnf = false

The arguments and environment variables listed in the box atop this page are forced on every dnf call, so runs stay quiet, non-interactive and reproducible: the defaults you would set in CI anyway.

Keep it enabled but tune how mpm drives it with a per-manager override:

[mpm.overrides.dnf]
timeout = 900

mpm config-template dnf prints every overridable attribute as a ready-to-paste block.

Recipes

A few jobs you would otherwise script around dnf, one mpm command each:

• Snapshot and clone a machine: mpm --dnf dump dnf.toml, then mpm restore dnf.toml on the next one.

• Export a compliance SBOM: mpm --dnf sbom (CycloneDX by default, --spdx for SPDX).

• Gate CI on health: mpm --dnf doctor relays Fedora DNF’s own diagnosis and exits non-zero on trouble.

Privilege escalation

System-wide manager: mpm wraps its privileged operations in sudo out of the box. Instead of letting the tool prompt mid-run, mpm primes the credential cache up-front, with a single branded password prompt at most. Turn escalation off for rootless setups with --no-sudo or the per-manager sudo override.

See privilege escalation for the full policy.

Concurrency

mpm never runs dnf at the same time as dnf5, urpmi, yum or zypper: they all reach the RPM database, and a second writer waits on its lock for as long as the first one holds it, rather than failing. Each mutating operation waits for the previous one, even with a higher --jobs, while managers outside this group keep running in parallel.

Only mutations are held back. The read-only queries (installed, outdated, search) take no backend lock and stay fully concurrent.

Cooldown

State of Fedora DNF’s release-age gating, from the cooldown support table:

Status: ❌ None (effort focused on dnf5)

A cooldown only pays off where a compromised release can be withdrawn while the clock runs, and can only be emulated where the registry dates its releases. From the retraction table:

• Registry: Distro binary archives (pkg:deb, pkg:rpm, pkg:alpm, pkg:apk)

• Retraction: Index revert: removal is an archive operation and the mirror is rebuilt without the package. Debian, for one, requires filing an RM: bug against ftp.debian.org (developers-reference)

• Publish date: ❌ the version string is the distro maintainer’s build, carrying no upstream publication date

With --cooldown set, mpm skips this manager’s install and upgrade operations rather than run them unguarded (fail-closed); --cooldown best-effort opts back in.

Version probe

The version is extracted from the output of dnf --version with the first of these regular expressions to match:

r"dnf5\s+version\s+(?P<version>\S+)"
r"(?P<version>\S+)"

Reference traces

Raw native outputs captured in the manager source: the reference mpm’s parsers were written against. If you know Fedora DNF well and a transcript below looks wrong, or a newer release changed its output format, report it.

$ dnf --color=never --quiet repoquery --userinstalled --qf {format}
NetworkManager-bluetooth___MPM___1.56.1___MPM___Bluetooth device plugin for NetworkManager___MPM___aarch64
NetworkManager-team___MPM___1.56.1___MPM___Team device plugin for NetworkManager___MPM___aarch64
NetworkManager-wifi___MPM___1.56.1___MPM___Wifi plugin for NetworkManager___MPM___aarch64

$ dnf --color=never --quiet repoquery --installed --qf {format}
librepo___MPM___1.21.0-1.fc44___MPM___Repodata downloading library___MPM___aarch64
openldap___MPM___2.6.13-1.fc44___MPM___LDAP support libraries___MPM___aarch64
wireless-regdb___MPM___2026.05.30-1.fc44___MPM___Regulatory database for 802.11 wireless networking___MPM___noarch

$ dnf --color=never --quiet repoquery --upgrades --qf {format}
librepo___MPM___1.21.0-2.fc44___MPM___Repodata downloading library___MPM___aarch64
openldap___MPM___2.6.14-1.fc44___MPM___LDAP support libraries___MPM___aarch64
wireless-regdb___MPM___2026.09.03-1.fc44___MPM___Regulatory database for 802.11 wireless networking___MPM___noarch

$ dnf --color=never --quiet repoquery --unneeded
bc-0:1.08.2-4.fc44.aarch64
dos2unix-0:7.5.6-1.fc44.aarch64
tree-0:2.2.1-4.fc44.aarch64

Feed any of these through mpm and the raw output becomes one uniform table, the same shape for every manager: filter it, project columns, or export it (mpm --dnf installed --output json, or csv, toml, yaml), each package carrying a purl and a version comparable across managers.

Upstream project

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Changelog

• 8.0.0.dev0 (unreleased)

  • Fix version detection against dnf5, whose banner was read as the version dnf5, dropping every RPM front-end from the pool on Fedora 41 and later.

  • Fix search on dnf5, which returned no results at all, and keep whole package descriptions instead of their first word.

  • Decline a dnf5 binary reached through the dnf name, leaving it to the dnf5 manager instead of reporting the same RPM database twice.

  • Fix outdated, which reported the upgrade candidate’s own version as the installed one, and now names the epoch and release both sides differ by.

  • Correct the search commands shown on each manager’s page, which named fewer options than mpm actually runs.

  • Correct the inventory and outdated commands shown on each manager’s page, which named fewer options than mpm actually runs.

• 7.4.0 (2026-07-25)

  • Plain cleanup no longer removes orphaned packages: their native sweeps moved behind cleanup --orphans. This also stops emerge’s cleanup from triggering its pre-depclean world upgrade unless --orphans is given.

  • remove no longer cascades to orphaned dependencies by default: a plain removal keeps them. Use the new remove --orphans to restore the previous behavior.

  • cleanup --cache now escalates through sudo: dnf clean all clears the root-owned package cache.

• 7.1.0 (2026-07-07)

  • upgrade and upgrade --all now pass --assumeyes, as the other dnf operations already did, so upgrades no longer hang on an interactive confirmation prompt.

• 6.2.0 (2026-03-25)

  • Add --quiet option to all invocations to reduce log verbosity.

• 5.19.0 (2024-11-14)

  • Implement remove operation.

  • Use query template instead of regex parsing to retrieve package data.

• 4.12.0 (2022-04-04)

  • Add support for dnf. Closes #516, refs #415.