How can I get a list of repositories 'apt-get' is checking?

Question

I want a list of repositories in sources.list, plus those in sources.list.d/.

Can I get this list in a form suitable for setting up another host so it watches the same repositories?

Additionally, how do I determine which repository is the source of a package, either installed or available?

See http://askubuntu.com/questions/148932/how-can-i-get-a-list-of-all-repositories-and-ppas-from-the-command-line — Mawg says reinstate Monica, May 18 '15 at 08:21

score 209 · Answer 1 · edited Jun 18 '12 at 23:03

209

It seems the closest is:

apt-cache policy

edited Jun 18 '12 at 23:03

Ry-

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answered Dec 30 '11 at 12:59

ktenney

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Did someone enhance the output (summarizing urls etc) and want to share his command here? – lony Apr 18 '17 at 12:30
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@Iony Howbout this : `apt-cache policy | awk '/http.*amd64/{print$2}' | sort -u` – SebMa Sep 02 '20 at 18:09
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or like this: ```apt-cache policy | grep origin | sort -u``` – stimur Jun 06 '23 at 13:16

score 60 · Answer 2 · edited Jan 29 '21 at 21:21

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As far as I know, you can't ask apt for what their current sources are. However, you can do what you want using shell tools.

Getting a list of repositories:

grep -h ^deb /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/* >> current.repos.list

Applying the list:

apt-add-repository << current.repos.list

Regarding getting the repository from a package (installed or available), this will do the trick:

apt-cache policy package_name | grep -m1 http | awk '{ print $2 " " $3 }'

However, that will show you the repository of the latest version available of that package, and you may have more repositories for the same package with older versions. Remove all the grep/awk stuff if you want to see the full list.

edited Jan 29 '21 at 21:21

Peter Mortensen

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answered Oct 05 '12 at 04:00

Valor

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simple full list `apt-cache policy |grep http |awk '{print $2 $3}' |sort -u` – shadowbq Apr 02 '15 at 13:04
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missing a space `apt-cache policy |grep http |awk '{print $2 " " $3}' |sort -u` – shadowbq Sep 05 '19 at 14:15
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In the command line with grep: `/etc/apt/sources.list.d/*` should be changed to `/etc/apt/sources.list.d/*.list`. As to the reason why, see https://askubuntu.com/questions/82825/do-files-at-etc-apt-sources-list-d-need-to-have-an-extension-list – Erik Sjölund May 09 '20 at 05:54
The OP has left the building, so it is up to us to make the corrections. – Peter Mortensen Jan 29 '21 at 21:24
These are all great. Thanks... One thing, though... why pipe grep to awk? `... | grep anything | awk '{print}'` can be done thusly ```... | awk '/anything/ {print}'``` -- it's like catting a file to pipe to grep. – JayRugMan Jul 01 '22 at 15:43

score 20 · Answer 3 · edited Jun 18 '12 at 23:03

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Try this:

cat /etc/apt/sources.list

edited Jun 18 '12 at 23:03

Ry-

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answered Dec 27 '11 at 17:59

radri

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That won't include the repos from /etc/apt/sources.list.d/, IE those resulting from #apt-add-repository XXX – ktenney Dec 27 '11 at 18:01
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`grep -Erh ^deb /etc/apt/sources.list*` should do the trick. – David May 29 '17 at 10:15
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`grep -Erh '^deb ' /etc/apt/sources.list*` to exclude the `deb-src` lines. – David May 29 '17 at 10:15

score 14 · Answer 4 · edited Jan 29 '21 at 21:27

It's not a format suitable for blindly copying to another machine, but users who wish to work out whether they've added a repository yet or not (like I did), you can just do:

sudo apt update

When apt is updating, it outputs a list of repositories it fetches. It seems obvious, but I've just realised what the GET URLs are that it spits out.

The following awk-based expression could be used to generate a sources.list file:

 cat /tmp/apt-update.txt | awk '/http/ { gsub("/", " ", $3); gsub("^\s\*$", "main", $3); printf("deb "); if($4 ~ "^[a-z0-9]$") printf("[arch=" $4 "] "); print($2 " " $3) }' | sort | uniq

Alternatively, as other answers suggest, you could just cat all the pre-existing sources like this:

cat /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/*

Since the disabled repositories are commented out with hash, this should work as intended.

`cat /etc/apt/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list.d/* | grep -e ^[^#]` removes comment lines from output. — SpeedCoder5, Jun 29 '22 at 16:36

score -7 · Answer 5 · edited Jan 29 '21 at 21:29

-7

All I needed was:

cd /etc/apt
nano source.list
deb http://http.kali.org/kali kali-rolling main non-free contrib
deb-src http://http.kali.org/kali kali-rolling main non-free contrib
apt upgrade && update

Source: Kali Network Repositories (/etc/apt/sources.list)

edited Jan 29 '21 at 21:29

Peter Mortensen

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answered Jan 31 '19 at 13:13

Crys

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How can I get a list of repositories 'apt-get' is checking?

5 Answers5