Automated reinstall of software from package list

Sun, 20 Nov 2016 00:00:00 +0000

If I need to reinstall a Ubuntu/Debian-based Linux OS (or mirror a software selection to another machine), this is how it can be done. On the source machine:sudpkg --get-selections > ~/Package.listcp -R /etc/apt/sources.list* ~/apt-key exportall > ~/repository.keysThen just copy the files to the target machine:suapt-key add ~/repository.keyscp -R ~/sources.list* /etc/apt/apt-get updateapt-get install dselectdselect updatedpkg --set-selections < ~/Package.listapt-get dselect-upgrade -yIf some packages are not available, this will fail. This concerns in my case manually installed packages like teamviewer or snapgene / snapgene_viewer . I usually remove those packages manually from the list (there are luckily not many of them).However, the upgrade is not fully automatic, since you need to e.g. agree to various licenses (e.g. for Microsoft’s True Type fonts) and acknowledge manually other stuff (e.g. libdvd-pkg legal issues), which kind of defeats the purpose of making this automatic and painless…

Reinstallation of packages from a list

Fri, 26 Sep 2008 00:00:00 +0000

If I install a new computer for myself (or if I do a fresh reinstall on an old machine), I want the computer have the software I am used to. To automatize this process, there a different approaches. If you use Ubuntu, you can use Ubuntu One to syncronize your software selection across many different machines (starting from Ubuntu 11.10 Oneiric Ocelot). If you use something else, it is getting tricky. You can use the following commands to generate a list of installed packages and load the list later for installation:dpkg --get-selections > installed-packages.lstdpkg --set-selections < installed-packages.lstdselectHowever, this creates big problems, because the list contains ALL packages including those that are hardware-specific. Actually you are only interested in the user-installed software. For reloading the software onto the same (or an identical) machine, this command works fine, but what if you want to use KDE instead of Gnome on the new computer? You still want to use the same programs, but the commands above will wreak havoc and may even break your desktop experience. Unfortunately I have not found anything better, but to open the text file generated with dpkg and to manually erase all lines that do not contain user-installed software (which is most of them).

Dselect on Michael’s Domain

Automated reinstall of software from package list

Reinstallation of packages from a list