pk4-generate-index command not found

Introduction

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

pk4-generate-index: command not found

or when using sudo you get the following error message

sudo: pk4-generate-index: command not found

Solutions to pk4-generate-index: command not found

How To Fix pk4-generate-index: command not found in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux / Raspbian

In Ubuntu pk4-generate-index is provided by pk4 package.

pk4 is:

pk4 resolves the specified argument(s) as either:

1. the name of a Debian binary package, and selects its Debian source package.
2. the name of a Debian source package, and selects it.
3. or a file path, and selects the Debian source package of the owning package.

The source package version is either the installed version (if any) or the installation candidate, as per “apt-cache policy”.

Then, pk4 downloads the entire selected source package (every file referenced by — and including — its .dsc file) and prints the output directory path.

pk4… • caps the disk usage of the checked out packages by deleting the oldest ones after crossing a limit (default: 2GiB). • allows users to enable supplied or shipped-with-pk4 hooks, e.g. git-init. • optimizes for low latency of each operation. • respects your APT configuration, i.e. should work in company intranets. • comes with tab completion for bash and zsh. • tries hard to download source packages, with fallback to snapshot.debian.org.

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

sudo apt-get -y install pk4

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

You can also use apt command to install pk4.

sudo apt -y install pk4

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

sudo aptitude install pk4

Summary

In this tutorial we learn how to fix pk4-generate-index command not found error in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux or Raspbian distribution.