Product SiteDocumentation Site

6.4. The apt-file Command

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 СОВЕТ Инкрементальные обновления 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
После обновления базы данных команда apt-file search pattern выведет список всех пакетов, которые содержат имя файла или путь, содержащий шаблон.
$ apt-file search bin/axi-cache
apt-xapian-index: /usr/bin/axi-cache
Команда apt-file list package вместо этого будет перечислены все файлы, поставляемые с пакетом.