Sometimes we refer to a file or a command and you might wonder, in which package it will be found. Fortunately the Debian repositories not only contain information about all the binary packages provided, but also all the files shipped with them. This information is stored in files named Contents-arch.gz and Contents-udeb-arch.gz. This information is not automatically downloaded by APT. Instead it needs the apt-file update command (from the similar named package) to retrieve the contents of all package sources mentioned in /etc/apt/sources.list. By default it downloads Contents*.pdiff files as described in sidebar TIP Pembaruan inkremental to reduce the amount of data necessary to be downloaded. To update the database on a weekly base, the following entry can be added to /etc/crontab if convenient.

@weekly root test -x /usr/bin/apt-file && /usr/bin/apt-file update >> /dev/null 2>&1

Setelah basisdata diperbarui, perintah apt-file search pola akan mencantumkan semua paket, yang memuat nama berkas atau path yang memuat pola.

$ apt-file search bin/axi-cache
apt-xapian-index: /usr/bin/axi-cache

Perintah apt-file list paket akan mencantumkan semua berkas yang dikirim dengan paket sebagai gantinya.