How to find what package a file belongs to on CentOS or Fedora

Last updated on July 29, 2020 by Dan Nanni

If you know the name of a package you want, it is straightforward to install the package with a software package manager, such as yum on RedHat-based systems. However, what if all you know is the name of an executable binary or library file that is missing, and you want to install whatever package that provides the file?

In this tutorial, I will explain how to find what package a particular file belongs to on RHEL-based platforms such as CentOS or Fedora.

There are two ways to find out what package contains a specific file on CentOS or Fedora.

Method One: yum

The first method is to use yum command itself. With whatprovides option, yum allows you to search for which package provides a requested file. With the option, you can specify the full path to a specific file, or wildcards for multiple files.

$ yum whatprovides /usr/bin/mysqladmin

mysql-5.1.66-2.el6_3.x86_64 : MySQL client programs and shared libraries
Repo        : base
Matched from:
Filename    : /usr/bin/mysqladmin

mysql-5.1.69-1.el6_4.x86_64 : MySQL client programs and shared libraries
Repo        : updates
Matched from:
Filename    : /usr/bin/mysqladmin

mysql-5.1.67-1.el6_3.x86_64 : MySQL client programs and shared libraries
Repo        : updates
Matched from:
Filename    : /usr/bin/mysqladmin

mysql-5.1.69-1.el6_4.x86_64 : MySQL client programs and shared libraries
Repo        : installed
Matched from:
Filename    : /usr/bin/mysqladmin

As you can see above, the mysqladmin command located in /usr/bin is contained in a software package called mysql.

Method Two: repoquery

The second method is via repoquery, a command-line utility for querying Yum repositories.

To install repoquery on CentOS, Fedora or RHEL:

$ sudo yum install yum-utils

To run repoquery to search for a package that contains a file, use the following format.

$ repoquery --whatprovides '/usr/bin/mysqldump'

mysql-0:5.1.69-1.el6_4.x86_64
mysql-0:5.1.66-2.el6_3.x86_64
mysql-0:5.1.67-1.el6_3.x86_64

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