I wanted to run ip command on my Ubuntu 18.04.

The package was not installed, so tried a package search….

root@nginx$ apt list -a ip

and

root@nginx$ dpkg --list ip

Lists nothing…


The apt-file utility is a saviour here.

If apt-file is not yet installed, you can use the apt list -a apt-file and get it installed.

Now you can find the package we use by the command its known for..

root@nginx$ apt-file update

root@nginx$ apt-file search -regexp '/bin/ip$'

It yields the package name as the ouput.

iproute2: /bin/ip

You can also search the package with another command

 apt-file search --regexp '/bin/route'

The result will be like

iproute2: /usr/bin/routef
iproute2: /usr/bin/routel

Now you can install the package by

root@nginx$ apt install iproute2

Check if the package is installed.

root@nginx$ dpkg -l iproute2

which should show something like

Desired=Unknown/Install/Remove/Purge/Hold
| Status=Not/Inst/Conf-files/Unpacked/halF-conf/Half-inst/trig-aWait/Trig-pend
|/ Err?=(none)/Reinst-required (Status,Err: uppercase=bad)
||/ Name                     Version           Architecture      Description
+++-========================-=================-=================-=====================================================
ii  iproute2                 4.15.0-2ubuntu1.3 amd64             networking and traffic control tools