Searching for applications with APT

Using “apt-get install” works perfectly well as long as you know the name of an application, but if you do not, it becomes a guessing game. Fortunately, APT has a search tool you can use to find the applications or types of applications you need for your Linux server.

APT can search the repository cache on your server with the command “apt-cache search”. For example, if you want to search for Apache, enter as root:

apt-cache search apache

But suppose you want a module or plugin related to your web server but you do not know exactly what it is called or even the generic name for it. You can perform a search like this:

apt-cache search “web server”

This will search for any application that has “web server” in the name or description. APT will print a list of the names of the applications followed by descriptions:

libapache2-authenntlm-perl - Perform Microsoft NTLM and Basic User Authentication
libapache2-mod-bt - BitTorrent tracker for the Apache2 web server
libapache2-mod-lisp - An Apache2 module that interfaces with Lisp environments
libapache2-mod-ocamlnet - OCaml application-level Internet libraries - netcgi2 Apache2 connector
libapache2-mod-ruby - Embedding Ruby in the Apache2 web server
libapache2-mod-shib2 - Federated web single sign-on system (Apache module)
libapache2-mod-vhost-hash-alias - Fast and efficient way to manage virtual hosting

Find the one you want and only enter the name of the applications:

apt-get install libapache2-authenntlm-perl

Photo: Flickr