NAME¶
apt-file - APT package searching utility -- command-line interface
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:
- 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.
- purge
- remove all Contents-* files from the cache directory.
- 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.
- show
- Alias for list.
- 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.
OPTIONS¶
- -a, --architecture 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).
- -c, --cache 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.
- -d, --cdrom-mount cdrom-mount-point
- Use cdrom-mount-point instead of apt's.
- -D, --from-deb
- Use contents of the given .deb archives(s) as patterns. Useful for
searching for file conflicts with other packages. Implies -F.
- -f, --from-file
- 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.
- -F, --fixed-string
- Do not expand search pattern with generic characters at pattern's start
and end.
- -i, --ignore-case
- Ignore case when searching for pattern.
- -l, --package-only
- Only display package name; do not display file names.
- -N, --non-interactive
- 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.
- -s, --sources-list sources.list
- Sets the sources.list file to a different value from its default
/etc/apt/sources.list.
- -v, --verbose
- Run apt-file in verbose mode.
- -x, --regexp
- 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.
- -y, --dummy
- Run in dummy mode (no action).
- -h, --help
- 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 ...
A uri is defined as:
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.
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".
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/
AUTHOR¶
apt-file was written by Sebastien J. Gross <sjg@debian.org>.