Re: reinstall

[Osamu Aoki <debian@aokiconsulting.com>]

On Tue, Feb 05, 2002 at 04:28:46PM +1030, Tom Cook wrote:
> Is there some way to get apt to re-download and re-install ALL
> packages installed on the system?  I am not looking for an upgrade,
> but a reinstall.  Should I just write some script to get a list of
> installed packages and xargs them to 'apt-get --reinstall install' or
> is there some way to specify all of the installed packages
> automagically?

 # dpkg --get-selections "*" >/myselections
 # cd /etc ; tar cvzf ../etc.tar.gz *
 # cd /
 ... move myselections and etc.tar.gz into safe place.

Reinstall. (Just minimum)
 # dselect update
 # dpkg --get-selections < /whereever/myselections
 # dselect install
 # apt-getupdate; apt-get install mc

... Use MC to browse old etc in etc.tar.gz and configure new system :)

> For the curious, the reason I ask is that I installed debian on a
> machine with an erratic nic that was handily corrupting stuff as it
> went, and a number of things are a touch unreliable (occasional
> segfaults).  So I want to reinstall it all.
Good luck.

My web page below has many hints handling broken upgrades.
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+  Osamu Aoki <debian@aokiconsulting.com>, GnuPG-key: 1024D/D5DE453D  +
+  My debian quick-reference, http://qref.sourceforge.net/quick/      +