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nmichaels
Asked: 2011-04-26 09:39:16 +0800 CST

What is the program that suggests installable packages?

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One of the features of Ubuntu that I really like is the one that suggests packages to install if you try to run a program that isn't installed, like this:

$ nmap
The program 'nmap' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing:
sudo apt-get install nmap

Is that a fancy feature of Bash? An extra daemon that hides in the background? How does it do that?

bash

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    command-not-found is the package you are looking for.

    • 12

  2. Just as an addition to the previous answer:

    To switch this off for your own account (without deinstalling the whole package and so disabling this for ALL users), you may just add the following line to your own ~/.bashrc:

    unset command_not_found_handle

    This reverts to the default bevaviour of bash (see /etc/bash.bashrc for the definition of the function command_not_found_handle: it calls command-not-found if it is installed, otherwise it prints the default "command not found" error message).

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