.\" This manpage has been automatically generated by docbook2man
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.\" Please send any bug reports, improvements, comments, patches,
.\" etc. to Steve Cheng .
.TH "APT-FILE" "1" "May 2003" "" ""
.SH NAME
apt-file \- APT package searching utility -- command-line interface
.SH SYNOPSIS
\fBapt-file\fR [ \fBoptions\fR ] [ \fBaction\fR ] [ \fBpattern\fR ]
\fBapt-file\fR\fB -f\fR [ \fBoptions\fR ]\fB search\fR [ \fBfile ...\fR ]
\fBapt-file\fR\fB -D\fR [ \fBoptions\fR ]\fB search\fR [ \fBbinary-packet.deb ...\fR ]
.SH "DESCRIPTION"
.PP
\fBapt-file\fR is a command line tool for
searching files in packages for the APT package management system.
.PP
Some actions are required to run the search:
.TP
\fBfind\fR
Alias for \fBsearch\fR\&.
.TP
\fBlist\fR
List the contents of a package matching the
\fBpattern\fR pattern. This action is very
close to the \fBdpkg -L\fR command except the
package does not need to be installed or fetched.
.TP
\fBpurge\fR
remove all \fIContents-*\fR
files from the cache directory.
.TP
\fBsearch\fR
Search in which package a file is included. A list of all
packages containing the \fBpattern\fR 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.
.TP
\fBshow\fR
Alias for \fBlist\fR\&.
.TP
\fBupdate\fR
Resynchronize the package contents from their sources. The
lists of the contents of packages are fetched from the location(s)
specified in
\fI/etc/apt/sources.list\fR\&. This command
attempts to fetch the
\fIContents-\&.gz\fR files from
remote sources. For downloading these uses either the curl or
wget commands as specified in \fIapt-file.conf\fR\&.
.SH "OPTIONS"
.TP
\fB -a, --architecture architecture \fR
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 $ARCH variable
in sources.list is expanded (but it does not influence
the search in any other way).
.TP
\fB -c, --cache cache-directory \fR
Sets the cache directory to \fIcache-directory\fR
instead of its default. If executed as non-root user, the default
is \fI$HOME/.cache/apt-file\fR with fall-back to
\fI/var/cache/apt/apt-file\fR\&. The latter is also
the default if apt-file is called as root.
.TP
\fB -d, --cdrom-mount cdrom-mount-point \fR
Use cdrom-mount-point instead of
\fBapt\fR\&'s.
.TP
\fB -D, --from-deb \fR
Use contents of the given .deb archives(s) as patterns.
Useful for searching for file conflicts with other packages.
Implies \fB-F\fR\&.
.TP
\fB -f, --from-file \fR
Read patterns from the given file(s), one per line.
Use - as filename for stdin.
If no files are given, then the list will be read from stdin.
This is much faster than invoking apt-file many times.
.TP
\fB -F, --fixed-string \fR
Do not expand search pattern with generic characters at
pattern's start and end.
.TP
\fB -i, --ignore-case \fR
Ignore case when searching for pattern\&.
.TP
\fB -l, --package-only \fR
Only display package name; do not display file names.
.TP
\fB -N, --non-interactive \fR
Skip schemes that are listed in the interactive line in
\fIapt-file.conf\fR\&.
This is useful if you want to call 'apt-file update' in cron jobs and skip all
schemes that may require user input.
.TP
\fB -s, --sources-list sources.list \fR
Sets the \fIsources.list\fR file to a
different value from its default
\fI/etc/apt/sources.list\fR\&.
.TP
\fB -v, --verbose \fR
Run \fBapt-file\fR in verbose mode.
.TP
\fB -x, --regexp \fR
Treat pattern as a (perl) regular expression. See
\fBperlreref\fR(1) for details. Without this option,
pattern is treated as a literal string to search
for.
.TP
\fB -y, --dummy \fR
Run in dummy mode (no action).
.TP
\fB -h, --help \fR
Display a short help screen.
.SH "CONFIGURATION FILE"
.PP
The \fBapt-file\fR configuration file can
be found in \fI/etc/apt/apt-file.conf\fR\&.
.PP
A string expansion is done on several values. See the string
expansion section.
.TP
\fBdestination\fR
This variable describes how cached files will be named.
.TP
\fBhttp | ftp | ssh | rsh | file | cdrom\fR
Defines the commands used to fetch files.
.SS "STRING EXPANSION"
.PP
A \fIsources.list\fR entry is defined as:
.nf
deb uri dist component1 component2 ...
.fi
A uri is defined as:
.nf
proto:/[/][user[:password]@]host[:port][/path]
.fi
.TP
\fB\fR
replace with the hostname
.TP
\fB\fR
replace with the port number
.TP
\fB\fR
replace with full uri
.TP
\fB\fR
replace with full path (relative to / on the host)
.TP
\fB\fR
replace with distribution name
.TP
\fB\fR
replace with component name
.TP
\fB\fR
replace with cache directory
.TP
\fB\fR
replace with destination expanded
value.
.TP
\fB\fR
replace with cdrom-mount-point\&.
.SH "BUGS"
.PP
The cdrom backend has not been tested.
.PP
Non-release lines in sources.list are not handled by apt-file.
.PP
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.
.PP
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.
.PP
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".
.SH "FILES"
.TP
\fB\fI/etc/apt/sources.list\fB\fR
Locations to fetch package contents from.
.TP
\fB\fI/etc/apt/sources.list.d/\fB\fR
Directory with additional sources.list snippets
.TP
\fB\fI/etc/apt/apt-file.conf\fB\fR
Configuration file for \fBapt-file\fR\&.
.SH "SEE ALSO"
.PP
\fBauto-apt\fR(1), \fBapt-cache\fR(8),
\fBapt-cdrom\fR(8), \fBdpkg\fR(8),
\fBdselect\fR(8),
\fIsources.list\fR(5),
\fIapt.conf\fR(5),
\fBapt_preferences\fR(5).
.PP
The APT users guide in
\fI/usr/share/doc/apt/\fR
.SH "AUTHOR"
.PP
\fBapt-file\fR was written by Sebastien J. Gross
\&.