On 5 Feb 1999, Adam Di Carlo wrote:
> > On Sun, 31 Jan 1999, rrr wrote:
> >> ok. I posted a more detailed explanation of what happened, but got
> >> no useful answer. Here's the question with no background on how it
> >> happened and what I think doesn't work: How do I "rebuild"
> >> dselect/dpkg's idea of what is installed i.e what file holds the
> >> "installed, not installed, dselected, etc." flags against the whole
> >> "available" database? Apt-get and "dselect/apt method" have a
> >> serious gap in thier ability keep this straight. If nothing else
> >> (actually I would like this best) is there a way to get dpkg to
> >> parse the p{ost, re}inst scripts to rebuild it's idea of what is
> >> actually installed on the system?
>
> As an alternative to Brandon's advice, if you haven't totally hosed
> your status file, you can do 'dpkg --get-selections > package-state',
> then wipe the / and /usr/ partitons (perhaps preserving /var and /etc
> and of course /usr/local and /home and the file mentioned above,
> 'package-state'). Install from DBootStrap (aka boot-floppies) and
> once you have the base system installed, do 'dpkg --set-selections <
> package-state'.
>
> If you are trying to correct a status file, i.e., it thinks this or
> that package are not installed but they really are, there's no good
> way to do that that I can think of, and even some reasons never to do
> that.
Unfortunately, this is what I want to do. i.e. dselect/apt doesn't know
that (huge download stuff like xbase, gimp, etc) is installed. I thought
about modifying package-state by hand, but decided against that. I
thought there would be some script out there that could parse some kinda
list of what each package actually installs - and validate with a criteria
of "is EVERY file this package installs, installed?" - if so change
package-state to "installed (or not-installed)".
I only run debian as a personal system, so this isn't that critical, but
it is the reason I switched from Slack i.e. a reliable way of keeping
track of dependancies and installed software base.
I will try a write such a script myself - if this is a complete waste of
time due to issues I am not currently aware of, please let know.
Thanks for your time.
>
> --
> .....Adam Di Carlo....adam@onShore.com.....<URL:http://www.onShore.com/>
>
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