update-apt-xapian-index command not found

Introduction

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

update-apt-xapian-index: command not found

or when using sudo you get the following error message

sudo: update-apt-xapian-index: command not found

Solutions to update-apt-xapian-index: command not found

How To Fix update-apt-xapian-index: command not found in Ubuntu / Debian / Kali Linux / Raspbian

In Ubuntu update-apt-xapian-index is provided by apt-xapian-index package.

apt-xapian-index is:

This package provides update-apt-xapian-index, a tool to maintain a Xapian index of Debian package information in /var/lib/apt-xapian-index, and axi-cache, a command line search tool that uses the index.

axi-cache allows one to search packages very quickly, and it also interfaces with the shell command line completion in a smart way, providing context-sensitive keyword and tag suggestions even before the search command is actually run.

update-apt-xapian-index allows plugins to be installed in /usr/share/apt-xapian-index to index all sorts of extra information, such as Debtags tags, popcon information, package ratings and anything else that would fit.

The index generated by update-apt-xapian-index is self-documenting, as it contains an autogenerated README file with information on the index layout and all the data that can be found in it.

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

sudo apt-get -y install apt-xapian-index

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

You can also use apt command to install apt-xapian-index.

sudo apt -y install apt-xapian-index

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

sudo aptitude install apt-xapian-index

Summary

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