apt-file(1)
NAME
apt-file - APT package searching utility -- command-line interface
SYNOPSIS
apt-file [ options ] [ action ] [ pattern ]
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 pack
- ages containing the pattern pattern is returned.
- 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-<ARCH>.gz files from the cache directory.
OPTIONS
- --cache | -c cache-directory
- Sets the cache directory to cache-directory instead of its default value (/var/cache/apt/apt-file) thus you can use aptfile even if you do not have administrator privileges.
- --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 aptfile.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.
- --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 ... - 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.
FILES
- /etc/apt/sources.list
- Locations to fetch package contents from.
- /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
cdrom backend has not been tested.
Non-release lines in sources.list are not handled by apt-file.
AUTHOR
- apt-file was written by Sebastien J. Gross <sjg@debian.org>.