Removed a file by accident

[Ric Moore]

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

-- 
My father, Victor Moore (Vic) used to say:
"There are two Great Sins in the world...
..the Sin of Ignorance, and the Sin of Stupidity.
Only the former may be overcome." R.I.P. Dad.
Linux user# 44256