Re: Debian contents of packages

[Harold Crouch <hcrouch@mchsi.com>]

HC> apt-get install apt-file
HC> apt-file update
HC> apt-file search filename

NG> Thanks, this does the trick.
NG> Pretty slow though, and my machine, although not state of the art,
NG> is no slowpoke (specs at the bottom). Any tricks here?

Actually, I could have interpreted your question in two ways: 
(1) How do I search the contents of [installed] packages for a file?  
(2) How do I search the contents of [all Debian] packages for a file? 

The answer to question 1 is: 
  dpkg -S filename  

But there have been times when I needed to know in what package a
specific file was located so that I could install that package/file.
Dpkg knows only the contents of installed packages.  Apt-file knows
the contents of all packages available through your sources.list.
When you do the apt-file update, you are pulling down a list of the
contents of all Debian packages: ~15,000 packages for Sarge plus
whatever additional repositories you have specified.  Yes, that step
takes a few minutes, but you should need to do it infrequently or
when you add additional lines to sources.list.

- Harold

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