Removed a file by accident

[Marcelo Magno T. Sales]

Em domingo 10 outubro 2010, Ric Moore escreveu:
> On Sun, 2010-10-10 at 19:02 -0300, Marcelo Magno T. Sales wrote:
> > Em domingo 10 outubro 2010, Ric Moore escreveu:
> > > On Sun, 2010-10-10 at 16:57 -0300, Marcelo Magno T. Sales wrote:
> > > > Em sábado 09 outubro 2010, Knight escreveu:
> > > > > On Sat, 2010-10-09 at 09:15 -0500, C de-Avillez wrote:
> > > > > > On Sat, 09 Oct 2010 11:16:26 +0200
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > Knight <knightotp at gmail.com> wrote:
> > > > > > > In order to find out to which package a file belongs you
> > > > > > > can (out of the box) use:
> > > > > > > 
> > > > > > > dpkg -S /sbin/restart
> > > > > > 
> > > > > > dpkg only searches on installed packages. A more generic
> > > > > > search can be done via 'apt-file'. To install it, 'sudo
> > > > > > apt-get install apt-file'.
> > > > > 
> > > > > Sorry first paragraph has typo's.
> > > > > Should be:
> > > > > 
> > > > > And you want to tell me that you have files on your computer
> > > > > that you didn't install and that don't belong to any
> > > > > packages or are _not_ placed there by yourself or your
> > > > > users? (I cannot think of any on my own systems)
> > > > 
> > > > No, it is the other way around. The OP said he had removed the
> > > > file accidentally. So, the file was not there anymore and
> > > > therefore dpkg could not tell you the package which had
> > > > installed that file.
> > > 
> > > But, the original package wasn't removed, so shouldn't it be able
> > > to tell him?? Of course, he could just hunt around using
> > > synaptic / properties. I'm gonna have to dig here, but I found a
> > > dpkg command line that would restore a missing file if the
> > > package name  was known. From what I dimly recall the command
> > > was similar to rpm --force. Gads, I better find that link to
> > > explain better, but it seems that dpkg will not install or
> > > update a missing file, unless explicitly told to. The command
> > > line to make it do so was a real finger twister. Ric
> > 
> > Yes, dpkg will reinstall a package and restore the files it had
> > installed previously, if you know the name of the package. But the
> > problem is that he didn't have this information. He wanted to find
> > out from what package that file came from, but the file did not
> > exist anymore. It seems dpkg can't help in this situation.
> 
> Well, he can do it like the brute force method I used. I knew that it
> was part of the mysql package, so I cranked synaptic up, went through
> each mysql package until I found the file I was missing. Then I used
> that command line to re-install it from that package.
> 
> But, I would think that there is a command line to search by file
> name to give up the package name it belongs to. I just didn't know
> it, so (again, brute force) I used synaptic and just a touch of head
> sweat. Ric

It's apt-file. However, it's not installed by default, you need to 
install the package apt-file.

[]'s
Marcelo