how to reinstall all? Alias: how to dup. an installation ?

[Paolo Pedaletti <paolop@mmpoint.it>]

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X-Operating-System: Linux niels 2.0.34 
X-Linux-Distribution: Debian 2.0r3

Ciao,
I want to format my HD and reinstall all the system, but I don't want to forget the list of
installed packages (or reinstall them by hand...).

If I do:

# dpkg --get-selections | grep "[^de]install" | cut -f "1" > dpkg--g-s

I have all the installed packages in that file.
And now?
I have tried to do:

# dpkg --set-selections `cat dpkg--g-s`

Wrong.

# dpkg -i -GE `cat dpkg--g-s`

Wrong, because it wants a .deb package, not only the name of the program.

I have thought to do:
/CDROM/debian/..../binary-i386/ # find . -iname "*deb" > /var/packages.list

But then ???

Q. Is it possible to copy an installation from a PC to another?
A. Yes (of course :-)

Q. HOW ???
A. .......................


IDEA!?
And if I use apt-get with:
deb file:/CDROM/debian stable main    ?

and then:

apt-get `cat dpkg--g-s`

The problem is that the distribution is on 2 CD, and I have only 1 CD-ROM
drive .... ;-)

So I should distinguish between the packages in main and the ones not in
main....UFFFFh!

Any suggestion?

Happy GNU Year

-- 

Paolo Pedaletti, Como
paolop@mmpoint.it