sync-available command not found

Introduction

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

sync-available: command not found

or when using sudo you get the following error message

sudo: sync-available: command not found

Solutions to sync-available: command not found

How To Fix sync-available: command not found in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux / Raspbian

In Ubuntu sync-available is provided by dctrl-tools package.

dctrl-tools is:

Debian package information is generally stored in files having a special file format, dubbed the Debian control file format (the dctrl format), a special case of the record jar file format. These tools operate on any files conforming in a general sense to that format and are therefore widely applicable whenever those formats are in play.

Included are:

grep-dctrl - Grep dctrl-format files grep-available - Grep the DPKG available database grep-status - Grep the DPKG status database grep-aptavail - Grep the APT available database grep-debtags - Grep the Debtags package database

sort-dctrl - Sort dctrl-format files

tbl-dctrl - Tabulate dctrl-format files

sync-available - Sync the dpkg available database with the apt database

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

sudo apt-get -y install dctrl-tools

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

You can also use apt command to install dctrl-tools.

sudo apt -y install dctrl-tools

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

sudo aptitude install dctrl-tools

Summary

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