apt-ftparchive command not found

In this troubleshooting guide we learn how to fix apt-ftparchive command not found error message

Introduction

When you run more command in linux terminal / console, you get the following error message

apt-ftparchive: command not found

or when using sudo you get the following error message

sudo: apt-ftparchive: command not found

In Ubuntu apt-ftparchive is provided by apt-utils package.

apt-utils is:

This package contains some less used commandline utilities related to package management with APT.

apt-extracttemplates is used by debconf to prompt for configuration questions before installation.
apt-ftparchive is used to create Packages and other index files needed to publish an archive of Debian packages
apt-sortpkgs is a Packages/Sources file normalizer.

To fix this problem, we can install more using the command below.

sudo apt-get -y install apt-utils

This command might take some time to finish depending on your machine internet connection.

You can also use apt command to install apt-utils.

sudo apt -y install apt-utils

Or if you have aptitude installed you can use the following command.

sudo aptitude install apt-utils

In this tutorial we learn how to fix apt-ftparchive command not found error in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux or Raspbian distribution.