Package: dpkg Version: 1.19.7 Severity: normal Dear Maintainer,
I wanted to verify which version of libc6 was installed so I did dpkg -s libc6 and its output was: +++++++++++++++++++++++++++ dpkg-query: error: --status needs a valid package name but 'libc6' is not: ambiguous package name 'libc6' with more than one installed instance Use --help for help about querying packages. +++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Messages addresses to "--help". I remembered then that the default system architecture is amd64 and has the additional i386. Help is not explaining anything related to "instances" but something about "architectures". I do not know if the only chance to have 2 instances of 2 packages with the same package-name is related to architecture (so they mean the same) but perhaps it would be interesting explaining somewhere that "package- name:architecture" is the syntax to check for a specific instance/architecture (man page only says that multi-arch fields and semantics were added since dpkg 1.16.2 but they are not described. I would have preferred the message listing the ambiguities of the installed packages; in this case: libc6:amd64 libc6:i386 Thank you, Josep -- Package-specific info: -- System Information: Debian Release: 10.3 APT prefers stable APT policy: (990, 'stable'), (500, 'stable-updates'), (500, 'proposed-updates') Architecture: amd64 (x86_64) Foreign Architectures: i386 Kernel: Linux 5.6.7 (SMP w/8 CPU cores) Locale: LANG=ca_AD.utf8, LC_CTYPE=ca_AD.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8), LANGUAGE=ca_AD.utf8 (charmap=UTF-8) Shell: /bin/sh linked to /bin/dash Init: systemd (via /run/systemd/system) Versions of packages dpkg depends on: ii libbz2-1.0 1.0.6-9.2~deb10u1 ii libc6 2.28-10 ii liblzma5 5.2.4-1 ii libselinux1 2.8-1+b1 ii tar 1.30+dfsg-6 ii zlib1g 1:1.2.11.dfsg-1 dpkg recommends no packages. Versions of packages dpkg suggests: ii apt 1.8.2 pn debsig-verify <none> -- no debconf information
