26

I have noticed that while on Ubuntu, if I type the following:

mc

and it isn't installed, I get the message below:

The program 'mc' is currently not installed. You can install it by typing: sudo apt-get install mc

However in Debian, that is not available. It just gives a "-bash: /usr/bin/mc: No such file or directory" message. How can I implement the same functionality in bash command line on Debian? Yes, I know that if it is package suggestion that I want, I can simply do a regex search using apt-cache search. However I was hoping for the simpler suggestion immediately on typing the name of the program.

As per discussions, the functionality is provided by the package command-not-found. However even after installing it, and also installing bash-completion package, this isn't available on the Debian bash shell.

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25

The reason that installing command-not-found did not start providing suggestions for non-installed packages was that I had missed a small notification from dpkg as part of the install.

One is supposed to run the command update-command-not-found immediately after running apt-get install command-not-found. In fact dpkg prompts for running this command.

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2
  • 2
    I also had to run apt-get update before running update-command-not-found then either open a new bash session or source /etc/bash.bash.rc. – jordanbtucker Feb 20 '19 at 16:53
  • I did an apt update before apt install command-not-found then the update-command-not-found, and then started a new shell, but found I needed another apt update and maybe update-command-not-found before it started working. – Dave X Apr 11 '19 at 3:22
9

The debian package seems to be incomplete. The README says that you should source /etc/bash_command_not_found in your .bashrc. Strangely that file is not included in the package.

The debian command-not-found package is based on the ubuntu package. The ubuntu package seems to be more complete in that regard.

Content of the ubuntu version of bash_command_not_found:

command_not_found_handle() {
  if  [ -x /usr/lib/command-not-found ]; then
     /usr/lib/command-not-found -- "$1" 
     return $?
  else
     return 127
  fi        
}

Add those lines to your ~/.bashrc (or /etc/bash.bashrc) and the command-not-found feature should work.

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2
  • 1
    The README is incorrect, Debian does not use that file. The handler is included in /etc/bash.bashrc (at least in Debian 9) which is run automatically by Bash interactive shells when they start up. – hackerb9 Sep 11 '17 at 2:08
  • Installing the command-not-found package (version 0.2.38-4 from debian.org) to MX Linux (Debian 9 Stretch base) did not modify /etc/bash.bashrc and subsequently didn't work until adding the lines in this answer. – Xen2050 Sep 20 '18 at 11:52
4

I solve this problem by:

First install command-not-found

sudo apt update
sudo apt install command-not-found

After that

sudo update-command-not-found
sudo apt update
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1
  • 1
    This seems to me like the most correct answer. – swalog Sep 21 '20 at 16:46

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