Finding packages

Say, for example, you just heard about this really cool program, and you are

pretty certain that it is provided in the Debian distribution, but a man or

info attempt fails to provide any information. When you ask dpkg about the

package, it says it isn't installed! So now what do you do?

Debian provides two files in its archives which are useful for this purpose:

Packages, and Contents. The Packages file is usually located in the binary

part of the archives, while the Contents file is usually in the outer directory of

the main portion of the distribution. If you know the name of the package, then

you can use grep to print its entry in the Packages file. However if you only

know the name of a program that you are interested in, like fuser mentioned

above, then the command:

grep fuser Contents

executed in the directory containing the Contents file, will tell us that

/bin/fuser is found in the package base/psmisc, in other words the psmisc

package is located in the section base, so it is most likely already installed on

the system (base packages are installed first). Checking with dpkg  s psmisc

will indicate the status of the package, and provide information about the

maintainer as well as a description of the package. If the package is not in 

stalled then the information from dpkg will be quite useless, as it can only

tell you that the package is not installed. Once you know the package name,

the Packages file can be grepped for the necessary information. So, look for

programs in the Contents file, and their packages in the Packages file.

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