A cautionary tale on dnf: Missing command. Add "--help"

User Support
1

Debian proficient. Haven’t used RHEL/Centos/Fedora in decades.

Find myself having a specific purpose to use a fedora-41-minimal template on Qubes 4.2.

  • Made sure the fedora-41-minimal template was installed, then
  • Cloned it as fedora-41-minimal-clone-1, then
  • From a dom0 Terminal I run Xterm using: qvm-run -u root fedora-41-minimal-clone-1 xterm.

No problems here, the Xterm runs up.

I run dnf and receive back the following

bash-5.2# dnf
Missing command. Add "--help" for more information about the arguments.

And because RedHat’s not been my thing, I interpret this message as being from the shell and not an error message from dnf(1).

I then proceed to do several hours of:

  • Qubes and RedHat/Fedora forum research
  • fedora-41-* template downloading and testing
  • General pulling of the hair

In order to try work out why dnf(1) isn’t installed within the Qubes Fedora templates, even though its been the default package manager tool for many years.

And then it hits me. What happens when you follow the error message instructions literally and type: dnf --help.

And then I realize the depths of my brief stint with stupidity.

The error message text doesn’t identify that it was dnf(1) who gave that output. I’d been running dnf all this time, but thinking that dnf wasn’t installed. Facepalm moment!

Don’t be like me. Don’t waste hours on this. Just run dnf --help and get a more useful message.

p.s. Written for you all to have a laugh at my expense, and as a cautionary tale to others. No responses required.

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2

I think your topic would be more useful if you answered it with this:

And mark your second post as a solution. And with a better title, someone looking for the following message will get a quick answer thanks to you.

Missing command. Add "--help" for more information about the arguments.
3

Good idea - done!

4

Don’t waste hours thinking the shell is giving you this message - its actually given by dnf(1) - but it’s not very informative. Just run dnf --help to get a more useful message.

3 Likes