To which Debian package does /etc/nsswitch.conf belong?
This file belongs to the base-files package. You can use the following apt-file command to see to which package a file belongs:
sudo apt-get install apt-file
apt-file update
apt-file search nsswitch.conf
Check debian README files for explanation about some files in base-files package
cat /usr/share/doc/base-files/README
Q. After upgrading my system recently, I noticed that some files from base-files do not match the ones which are installed on a fresh install of squeeze. Should I not be warned about that?
A. Those files are configuration files, so they are completely under the control of the system admin. The files installed by base-files are just defaults. Changes in the default files are not important enough to warn the user, as it is also policy that prompting should be reduced to a minimum. This is also the reason they are not handled via dpkg's conffile mechanism.
In either case, if you want to "upgrade" those files, just look at the postinst for base-files (i.e. /var/lib/dpkg/info/base-files.postinst) and you will see how they are created and where their master copies are:
install_from_default /usr/share/base-files/nsswitch.conf /etc/nsswitch.conf
install_from_default /usr/share/base-files/dot.profile /root/.profile
install_from_default /usr/share/base-files/dot.bashrc /root/.bashrc
install_from_default /usr/share/base-files/profile /etc/profile
install_from_default /usr/share/base-files/motd /etc/motd
So, if you want your system to be as similar as possible to a newly installed squeeze system, you might want to sync these files manually.
dpkg --search
do not show /etc/nsswitch.conf
because it is not registered as conffile so it is a bit of a special case. For example dpkg -S /etc/deluser.conf
can be used to identify package that owns /etc/deluser.conf
file.
With path omitted dpkg --search nsswitch.conf
actually show results.
I also like dlocate utility which is very helpful to find which package owns a file. dlocate
is a faster alternative to dpkg -S
.
apt-file
is most useful to search for files in non-installed packages.