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
ASTUCE Mises à jour incrémentale 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.
