[vox-tech] finding the debian package that provides a command

[David Hummel]

On Sun, Nov 16, 2003 at 07:29:27PM -0800, Peter Jay Salzman wrote:
> 
> On Sun 16 Nov 03,  7:12 PM, David Hummel <ddhummel@pacbell.net> said:
> > Does dpkg or apt (or maybe some other tool) provide a mechanism for
> > determining what package a file or command belongs to for packages
> > that aren't installed?
> 
> p@satan$ auto-apt search xargs
> usr/bin/xargs   base/findutils

Thanks (to Ken as well).  But try:

$ auto-apt search gqview

... and look at the mess you get.

> p@satan$ apt-cache search xargs
> findutils - utilities for finding files--find, xargs, and locate

This seems to be incomplete since it relies on the file or command name
being in the package descriptions in /var/lib/apt/lists.

Try:

$ apt-cache search updatedb

(updatedb is also in the findutils package)

"apt-file search" seems the most promising for this purpose (and
wouldn't you know I had apt-file installed already ;-).

David Hummel