"automated" install/re-install from status file or package list

[Andreas Hatz <ahatz@nemesis.com.au>]

Does anybody know of a good way of using an old /var/lib/dpkg/status
file to quickly reinstall debian. I would like to be able to do this to
reduce the amount of time it takes me to re-build a machine after an
attack or for installing all the same packages as another web server
instead of choosing all packages manually.

I have tried the following (rather clumsy) method:

# grep -B1 -e "install ok"  /var/lib/dpkg/status 
	\|grep "Package:" |cut -d" " -f2 > installed.packages
# apt-get install `cat installed.packages`

This does not work as well as I first thought. plenty of "broken
packages"

This is a functionality of apt-get that would come in very handy I
think.

cheers,

Andreas