What Does the %i Mean When Used in a Command

In these DNF (Dandified YUM) commands, %i is a systemd specifier that gets replaced with the instance name when used in a systemd service template unit file.

However, seeing %i in standalone DNF commands like this suggests these lines are likely from a systemd service template file (ending in @.service). When the service is instantiated, %i gets replaced with whatever comes after the @ symbol.

For example, if you have a service template called nvidia-cleanup@.service and you run:

systemctl start nvidia-cleanup@550.service

Then %i would be replaced with 550, resulting in:

dnf erase kmod-nvidia-550-*
dnf erase lib-nvidia-550-*
dnf erase nvidia*-550-*

This pattern is commonly used for NVIDIA driver cleanup scripts where you want to remove all packages related to a specific driver version number. The %i allows you to create a single template that can work for any driver version by passing the version number as the instance parameter.

If these commands were meant to be run directly in a shell (not through systemd), you’d need to replace %i with the actual version number you want to target.