yum whatprovides apt alternatives

If you’re using rpm based Linux distribution, most likely you’re familiar with yum whatprovides command. Using this command we can search which packages provides a specific file.

In Ubuntu or Debian-based Linux distribution we can also do similar action using dpkg and apt-file.

Searching File Using dpkg -S

To get which packages provides a specific file we can use dpkg command using -S option. We only need to provide the file name that we want to search.

For example we can search which package providing lscpu using command below.

$ dpkg -S lscpu
util-linux: /usr/share/man/man1/lscpu.1.gz
util-linux: /usr/share/bash-completion/completions/lscpu
util-linux: /usr/bin/lscpu

Searching File Using apt-file

Install apt-file

If apt-file is not installed on your system yet, you can use command below to install apt-file

sudo apt-get install apt-file

Update apt-file database

After installing apt-file we need to update apt-file database using command below

sudo apt-file update

Search file using apt-file

To search the same file lscpu using apt-file command below

$ apt-file search lscpu
fish-common: /usr/share/fish/completions/lscpu.fish
manpages-de: /usr/share/man/de/man1/lscpu.1.gz
manpages-fr-extra: /usr/share/man/fr/man1/lscpu.1.gz
manpages-pl: /usr/share/man/pl/man1/lscpu.1.gz
util-linux: /usr/bin/lscpu
util-linux: /usr/share/bash-completion/completions/lscpu
util-linux: /usr/share/man/man1/lscpu.1.gz

To search for a specific file we can use a full / absolute path of the file. For example

$ apt-file search /usr/bin/lscpu
util-linux: /usr/bin/lscpu

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to use apt to do similar actions like yum whatprovides does. Hope this is useful and see you next time. Happy Hacking!