The apt-cache command line tool is used for searching apt software
package cache. In simple words, this tool is used to search software
packages, collects information of packages and also used to search for
what available packages are ready for installation on Debian or Ubuntu
based systems.
Pour connaître le nom du paquet et sa description avant l’installation, utilisez l’indicateur ‘search’. Utiliser «search» avec apt-cache affichera une liste des paquets correspondants avec une description courte. Supposons que vous souhaitiez connaître la description du package «vsftpd», alors la commande serait.
Syntax:
apt-cache search SearchTerm
$ apt-cache search vsftpd
The possible output would be:
vsftpd - lightweight, efficient FTP server written for security
ccze - A robust, modular log coloriser
ftpd - File Transfer Protocol (FTP) server
yasat - simple stupid audit tool
To find and list down all the packages starting with ‘vsftpd‘, you
could use the following command.
$ apt-cache pkgnames vsftpd
You may also want to run the results through a more, or even a grep.
For instance:
apt-cache search firefox | grep plugin