error : unable to locate package

Question

I have installed Ubuntu on a virtual machine and am trying to install Snort on it. However, it's giving me an error message:

I tried sudo apt-get update command as well but gave me the same error.

Please help.

Thanks.

Answer 1

You should provide just the package name to apt-get, not a downloaded tarfile. This would install the package version from the Ubuntu repositories:

sudo apt-get install snort

Answer 2

From brouhaha:

What is .tar.gz format?

Under Unix, tar archives are the most common means of distributing bundles of files, and gzip is the most common compression program. A .tar.gz file is simply a bundle of files packaged with tar, and subsequently compressed with gzip.

Sometimes the extension ".tgz" is used as an abbreviation for ".tar.gz". This is especially common on platforms such as MS-DOS that have arbitrary constraints on filenames (no more than one dot, and no more than three characters after the dot).

From Wikipedia:

Debian packages are standard Unix ar archives that include two tar archives optionally compressed with gzip (zlib), Bzip2, lzma, or xz (lzma2): one archive holds the control information and another contains the program data.

From Wikipedia:

Ubuntu is a Debian-based Linux operating system and distribution for personal computers, smartphones and network servers.

Since, Ubuntu is a debian-based OS thus, it uses *.deb packages to install software but if you want you may install softwares using .tar.gz files. But then in that case the commands will be different. Have a look at this answer for further information.

From Ubuntu:

The apt-get command is a powerful command-line tool, which works with Ubuntu's Advanced Packaging Tool (APT) performing such functions as installation of new software packages, upgrade of existing software packages, updating of the package list index, and even upgrading the entire Ubuntu system.

So, if you want to install any software in Ubuntu, then you have to type the following command:

sudo apt-get install <package-name>

In your case it would be:

sudo apt-get install snort