Sometimes we refer to a file or a command and you might wonder, in which package it will be found. Fortunately the Debian repositories not only contain information about all the binary packages provided, but also all the files shipped with them. This information is stored in files named Contents-arch.gz and Contents-udeb-arch.gz. This information is not automatically downloaded by APT after installation. Instead it needs the apt-file update command (from the similar named package) to initially retrieve the contents of all package sources mentioned in /etc/apt/sources.list. By default it downloads Contents*.pdiff files as described in sidebar SUGERENCIA Actualizaciones incrementales to reduce the amount of data necessary to be downloaded. To update the database on a weekly base, the following entry can be added to /etc/crontab if convenient. After installing apt-file, every apt-get update will also retrieve and update the Contents files.

@weekly root test -x /usr/bin/apt-file && /usr/bin/apt-file update >> /dev/null 2>&1

Después de actualizar la base de datos, la orden apt-file search pattern listará todos los paquetes, los que contienen un nombre de archivo o ruta que coincide con el patrón.

$ apt-file search bin/axi-cache
apt-xapian-index: /usr/bin/axi-cache

En cambio, la orden apt-file list paquete listará todos los archivos incluidos en el paquete.