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I was following these instructions and I have installed apt-file along with some other packages using:

sudo apt-get install gnupg pbuilder ubuntu-dev-tools bzr-builddeb apt-file

And now every time I startup my computer I get this notice:

apt-file update needed notice

So I finally went into Terminal and typed the command:

apt-file update

And I got this output:

apt-file is now using the user's cache directory.
If you want to switch back to the system-wide cache directory,
 run 'apt-file purge'
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Downloading Index http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/utopic/Contents-amd64.diff/Index:
No Index available.
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File is up-to-date.
Downloading Index http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/dists/utopic-updates/Contents-amd64.diff/Index:
No Index available.
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File is up-to-date.
Ignoring source without Contents File:
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Ignoring source without Contents File:
  http://dl.google.com/linux/chrome/deb/dists/stable/Contents-amd64.gz

So I see that it says:

apt-file is now using the user's cache directory.
If you want to switch back to the system-wide cache directory,
 run 'apt-file purge'

So what exactly is apt-file? And what does it mean by the fact that it is now using the user's cache directory? Is this a good thing? What is the difference here between the user's cache directory and the system-wide cache directory, and which one should I use? Does this in any way affect my apt-get sources?

OS Information:

Description:    Ubuntu 14.10
Release:    14.10

Package Information:

apt-file:
  Installed: 2.5.2.3ubuntu1
  Candidate: 2.5.2.3ubuntu1
  Version table:
 *** 2.5.2.3ubuntu1 0
        500 http://gb.archive.ubuntu.com/ubuntu/ utopic/universe amd64 Packages
        100 /var/lib/dpkg/status
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1 Answer 1

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23
  • apt-file is used to do a search of which package provides a file. Consider it the offline and somewhat limited version of http://packages.ubuntu.com.
  • Since you used apt-file update without sudo, it cannot use a system-wide directory (typically /var/cache/apt/apt-file), and instead uses a directory in your home (~/.cache/apt-file).
  • Searches by other users cannot use your user's cache.
  • If you're the only user, it doesn't really matter which cache apt-file uses, as long as you're consistent about using sudo (or not).
  • apt-get and apt-file share sources, but neither affects the other.
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6
  • 1
    So what exactly does apt-file download? Just basically a catalogue? Or does it actually download any of the packages?
    – user364819
    Jun 24, 2015 at 14:02
  • 3
    @ParanoidPanda catalogue. It exists to provide information about packages, not install them.
    – muru
    Jun 24, 2015 at 14:03
  • @ParanoidPanda iirc one of the files in a repository is a list of files by package with their hashes.
    – muru
    Jun 24, 2015 at 14:04
  • So if it just so happened that one of the packages was malicious or caused trouble, I wouldn't have got it, but just the information on it?
    – user364819
    Jun 24, 2015 at 14:19
  • @ParanoidPanda yes.
    – muru
    Jun 24, 2015 at 14:42

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