dpkg -S

[Patrick Olson <compman@internetcds.com>]

On Mon, 9 Aug 1999, Ed Cogburn wrote:

> 02:29am ~$ dpkg -S /usr/bin/top
> procps: /usr/bin/top
> 02:29am ~$ dpkg -S /bin/ps
> procps: /bin/ps

I have a question about using dpkg -S.  Today, when I tried to install the
software for my UPS, it complained that it couldn't find
"libncurses.so.3.0" so I thought I would try

picard:~# dpkg -S libncurses.so.3.0
dpkg: *libncurses.so.3.0* not found.

As you can see, it didn't help me any.  I ran it again after installing
ncurses3.0 (which happened to be the right package) and it worked: 

picard:~# dpkg -S libncurses.so.3.0
ncurses3.0: /lib/libncurses.so.3.0

As such, it seems that dpkg -S only works on packages that are already
installed.  Is there something I can use to determine which package needs
to be installed when a program complains about a particular file?

Thanks,
Patrick Olson