Re: Who installed package "foo"?

[John Crawley <john@bunsenlabs.org>]

On 02/11/2020 12:31, Victor Sudakov wrote:
> David Wright wrote:
> > On Mon 02 Nov 2020 at 09:52:53 (+0700), Victor Sudakov wrote:
> > > Dan Ritter wrote:
> > > > > When I want to figure out what package has installed package "foo" as a
> > > > > dependency, is there a less barbaric method than
> > > > >
> > > > > apt-get -s remove foo
> > > >
> > > > In addition to the other answers I see, you probably have a
> > > > record of when it happened in /var/log/history.log
> > >
> > > You probably mean /var/log/apt/history.log.*
> > >
> > > Unfortunately the information about "foo" seems to have already been rotated away.
> >
> > $ grep -e '^Package:' -e 'Depends: .*\<foo\>' /var/lib/dpkg/status | grep -B1 -e 'Depends:' | less
>
> Oh, parsing a text file is to my liking, thank you for the hint.

apt-cache has already been mentioned, but I think with a few more 
options it will output what you want without having to pipe multiple 
commands:

apt-cache rdepends --installed --no-suggests --no-conflicts --no-breaks 
--no-replaces --no-enhances <package>

Add --no-recommends to the options if you prefer.

--
John