blog/archive/2016/02/02.rss

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   4                 <title>Petter Reinholdtsen - Entries from February 2016</title>
   5                 <description>Entries from February 2016</description>
   6                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/</link>
   7
   8
   9         <item>
  10                 <title>Using appstream in Debian to locate packages with firmware and mime type support</title>
  11                 <link>http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_in_Debian_to_locate_packages_with_firmware_and_mime_type_support.html</link>
  12                 <guid isPermaLink="true">http://people.skolelinux.org/pere/blog/Using_appstream_in_Debian_to_locate_packages_with_firmware_and_mime_type_support.html</guid>
  13                 <pubDate>Thu, 4 Feb 2016 16:40:00 +0100</pubDate>
  14                 <description>&lt;p&gt;The &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/DEP-11&quot;&gt;appstream system&lt;/a&gt;
  15 is taking shape in Debian, and one provided feature is a very
  16 convenient way to tell you which package to install to make a given
  17 firmware file available when the kernel is looking for it.  This can
  18 be done using apt-file too, but that is for someone else to blog
  19 about. :)&lt;/p&gt;
  20
  21 &lt;p&gt;Here is a small recipe to find the package with a given firmware
  22 file, in this example I am looking for ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin, randomly
  23 picked from the set of firmware announced using appstream in Debian
  24 unstable.  In general you would be looking for the firmware requested
  25 by the kernel during kernel module loading.  To find the package
  26 providing the example file, do like this:&lt;/p&gt;
  27
  28 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
  29 % apt install appstream
  30 [...]
  31 % apt update
  32 [...]
  33 % appstreamcli what-provides firmware:runtime ctfw-3.2.3.0.bin | \
  34   awk &#39;/Package:/ {print $2}&#39;
  35 firmware-qlogic
  36 %
  37 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  38
  39 &lt;p&gt;See &lt;a href=&quot;https://wiki.debian.org/AppStream/Guidelines&quot;&gt;the
  40 appstream wiki&lt;/a&gt; page to learn how to embed the package metadata in
  41 a way appstream can use.&lt;/p&gt;
  42
  43 &lt;p&gt;This same approach can be used to find any package supporting a
  44 given MIME type.  This is very useful when you get a file you do not
  45 know how to handle.  First find the mime type using &lt;tt&gt;file
  46 --mime-type&lt;/tt&gt;, and next look up the package providing support for
  47 it.  Lets say you got an SVG file.  Its MIME type is image/svg+xml,
  48 and you can find all packages handling this type like this:&lt;/p&gt;
  49
  50 &lt;blockquote&gt;&lt;pre&gt;
  51 % apt install appstream
  52 [...]
  53 % apt update
  54 [...]
  55 % appstreamcli what-provides mimetype image/svg+xml | \
  56   awk &#39;/Package:/ {print $2}&#39;
  57 bkchem
  58 phototonic
  59 inkscape
  60 shutter
  61 tetzle
  62 geeqie
  63 xia
  64 pinta
  65 gthumb
  66 karbon
  67 comix
  68 mirage
  69 viewnior
  70 postr
  71 ristretto
  72 kolourpaint4
  73 eog
  74 eom
  75 gimagereader
  76 midori
  77 %
  78 &lt;/pre&gt;&lt;/blockquote&gt;
  79
  80 &lt;p&gt;I believe the MIME types are fetched from the desktop file for
  81 packages providing appstream metadata.&lt;/p&gt;
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