APT-FILE

NAME

SYNOPSIS

apt-file [ options ] [ action ] [ pattern ]

apt-file -f [ options ] search [ file ... ]

apt-file -D [ options ] search [ binary-packet.deb ... ]

DESCRIPTION

apt-file is a command line tool for searching files in packages for the APT package management system.

Some actions are required to run the search:

update

Resynchronize the package contents from their sources. The lists of the contents of packages are fetched from the location(s) specified in /etc/apt/sources.list. This command attempts to fetch the Contents-<ARCH>.gz files from remote sources. For downloading these uses either the curl or wget commands as specified in apt-file.conf.

search

Search in which package a file is included. A list of all packages containing the pattern pattern is returned.

apt-file will only search for filenames, not directory names. This is due to the format of the Contents files it searches.

find

Alias for search.

list

List the contents of a package matching the pattern pattern. This action is very close to the dpkg -L command except the package does not need to be installed or fetched.

show

Alias for list.

purge

remove all Contents-* files from the cache directory.

OPTIONS

--cache | -c cache-directory

Sets the cache directory to cache-directory instead of its default. If executed as non-root user, the default is $HOME/.cache/apt-file with fall-back to /var/cache/apt/apt-file. The latter is also the default if apt-file is called as root.

--verbose | -v

Run apt-file in verbose mode.

--cdrom-mount | -d cdrom-mount-point

Use cdrom-mount-point instead of apt's.

--non-interactive | -N

Skip schemes that are listed in the interactive line in apt-file.conf. This is useful if you want to call 'apt-file update' in cron jobs and skip all schemes that may require user input.

--ignore-case | -i

Ignore case when searching for pattern.

--regexp | -x

Treat pattern as a (perl) regular expression. See perlreref(1) for details. Without this option, pattern is treated as a literal string to search for.

--version | -V

Show version number.

--architecture | -a architecture

Sets architecture to architecture. This option is useful if you search a package for a different architecture from the one installed on your system. It determines how the $ARCH variable in sources.list is expanded (but it does not influence the search in any other way).

--sources-list | -s sources.list

Sets the sources.list file to a different value from its default /etc/apt/sources.list.

--package-only | -l

Only display package name; do not display file names.

--from-file | -f

Read patterns from the given file(s), one per line. Use -f - for stdin. This is much faster than invoking apt-file many times.

--from-deb | -D

Use contents of the given .deb archives(s) as patterns. Useful for searching for file conflicts with other packages. Implies -F.

--fixed-string | -F

Do not expand search pattern with generic characters at pattern's start and end.

--dummy | -y

Run in dummy mode (no action).

--help | -h

Display a short help screen.

CONFIGURATION FILE

The apt-file configuration file can be found in /etc/apt/apt-file.conf.

A string expansion is done on several values. See the string expansion section.

destination

This variable describes how cached files will be named.

http | ftp | ssh | rsh | file | cdrom

Defines the commands used to fetch files.

STRING EXPANSION

A sources.list entry is defined as:

          deb uri dist component1 component2 ...
        

          proto:/[/][user[:password]@]host[:port][/path]
        

<host>

replace with the hostname

<port>

replace with the port number

<uri>

replace with full uri

<path>

replace with full path (relative to / on the host)

<dist>

replace with distribution name

<comp>

replace with component name

<cache>

replace with cache directory

<dest>

replace with destination expanded value.

<cdrom>

replace with cdrom-mount-point.

FILES

/etc/apt/sources.list

Locations to fetch package contents from.

/etc/apt/sources.list.d/

Directory with additional sources.list snippets

/etc/apt/apt-file.conf

Configuration file for apt-file.

SEE ALSO

auto-apt(1), apt-cache(8), apt-cdrom(8), dpkg(8), dselect(8), sources.list(5), apt.conf(5), apt_preferences(5).

The APT users guide in /usr/share/doc/apt/  

BUGS

The cdrom backend has not been tested.

Non-release lines in sources.list are not handled by apt-file.

There is only one Contents file per distribution that contains all components (i.e. main, contrib, and non-free). Threrefore, apt-file will display search results from all components, even if not all components are included in the sources.list file.

When a new line has been added to the sources.list and apt-file update has not been run, apt-file does not print a warning message.

Complex regular expressions that match the leading slash may not work correctly. As a workaround, try to pull the leading slash to the beginning of the regular expression. For example, use "/(usr/bin/vim|sbin/lvm)" instead of "/usr/bin/vim|/sbin/lvm".  

AUTHOR

apt-file was written by Sebastien J. Gross <sjg@debian.org>.

Index

NAME

SYNOPSIS

DESCRIPTION

OPTIONS

CONFIGURATION FILE

STRING EXPANSION

FILES

SEE ALSO

BUGS

AUTHOR