Making friends with apt-*

By Filip Salo; published on February 06, 2007.

I'm trying to learn more about apt-get and its compadres. Here's today's gem.

The problem: "Hmm, I wonder which package provides that pdfnup thingie I use at work."

The solution: apt-file lets you search the contents of packages, whether they're installed or not. Let's install it and give it a shot:

$ sudo apt-get install apt-file
$ sudo apt-file update
$ apt-file search bin/pdfnup
pdfjam: usr/bin/pdfnup

And there you go. Now the pdfnup utility is just a sudo apt-get install pdfjam away.