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Accepted
ysap
Asked: 2013-01-12 11:25:13 +0800 CST

How to tell which packages are available to install using apt-get?

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Using Ubuntu Software Center I can perform a search on an approximate package name and get the matching packages list to select from.

If I work on a remote machine via ssh (i.e. command line only), how do I perform such a search?

command-line

1 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    Several options here.

    • apt-cache, which will search in descriptions too, by default:

      # keywords or regular expressions
apt-cache search keyword1 keyword2

# same, but limits to name of package
apt-cache search --names-only packagename

# shows versions available from each repo
apt-cache policy packagename

    • aptitude:

      aptitude search packagename

      aptitude has known issues using Multiarch currently, but searching should work though. LP bug #831768

    • dpkg:

      dpkg -l | grep keyword # inefficient because of useless use of grep

dpkg -l pattern-of-packagename

    • Online: packages.ubuntu.com

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