NAME

       deb-old - old style Debian binary package format

SYNOPSIS

       filename.deb

DESCRIPTION

       The .deb format is the Debian binary package file format. This manual page describes the old format, used
       before Debian 0.93. Please see deb(5) for details of the new format.

FORMAT

       The  file  is  two  lines of format information as ASCII text, followed by two concatenated gzipped ustar
       files.

       The first line is the format version number padded to 8  digits,  and  is  0.939000  for  all  old-format
       archives.

       The  second  line  is  a  decimal  string (without leading zeroes) giving the length of the first gzipped
       tarfile.

       Each of these lines is terminated with a single newline character.

       The first tarfile contains the control information, as a series of ordinary files. The file control  must
       be present, as it contains the core control information.

       In  some  very old archives, the files in the control tarfile may optionally be in a DEBIAN subdirectory.
       In that case, the DEBIAN subdirectory will be in the control tarfile too, and the  control  tarfile  will
       have  only files in that directory. Optionally the control tarfile may contain an entry for ‘.’, that is,
       the current directory.

       The second gzipped tarfile is the filesystem archive, containing pathnames relative to the root directory
       of the system to be installed on. The pathnames do not have leading slashes.

SEE ALSO

       deb(5), dpkg-deb(1), deb-control(5).

1.19.0.5                                           2022-05-25                                         deb-old(5)