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Question: does dpkg -S <filename> work on packages not installed? I phrased my original question awkwardly...I need to find what package to install to get a particular file.
As far as I am aware, it only looks at installed packages.
For your particular purposes, I would check the "Search the contents of packages" section at https://packages.ubuntu.com/ - it won't include Mint-specific packages, but those are only a small minority of the packages in a Mint system.
That only shows the candidate and alternative software sources for a package, not what the OP was looking for which is a reverse lookup of the files that a package installs.
Distribution: Debian /Jessie/Stretch/Sid, Linux Mint DE
Posts: 5,195
Rep:
You can search packages.debian.org. There is a web interface for searching specific files in Debian.
I know you are using Mint, but Mint is a derivative of Debian, eventually. I think if you search for packages in Sid/Unstable you hit your solution in 95% of all cases. It is not perfect. Use older Debian versions for older versions of Mint.
Note that Mint and Debian packages are generally not compatible. Use this as a lookup tool.
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