Installing a new machine with a selected list of package ...

[Bruno BEAUFILS <Bruno.Beaufils@lifl.fr>]

I would like to install my new laptop with the same packages as those
installed on my desktop (which is a sid debian).

So I installed a basic potato debian without selecting any packages, then after
the first reboot I mount (via NFS) a directory where I stored a debian ftp
site mirror plus some specific packages (a home made kernel (build with
kernel-package) and such packages (alsa-modules, pcmcia-modules)).

I configure apt such that it looks for package on this nfs mounted directory.

I then installed my own packages (kernel, pcmcia, etc.) reboot the system,
then I do on my desktop

dpkg --get-selections > mylist

and on my laptop

cat mylist | dpkg --set-selections 

I have then done a :

dselect install

And all was not right. Dselect have had a lot of problems with some package. I
call dselect install a lot of time, and then all seems right, but a lot of
stuff does not seems to be well installed (X for instance, even after I copy
my own hand-made XF86Config-4).

So here is my question :

What's the good and efficient way to install a debian box with exactly the
same list of packages than another machine ?

Second question :

Where may I have found this information ?

-- 
-- Bruno