recovering /var, especially /var/lib/dpkg

[Dan Christensen <jdc@uwo.ca>]

I had a laptop stolen and shortly afterwards the two hard drives on a
server both failed.  Unfortunately, those drives contained the backups
of my laptop, and I wasn't able to recover my backup of /var.  So on
my new laptop I have restored everything except /var, and the question
is whether it will be possible to recover the essential parts of /var.

Luckily, before running each backup I save the output of "dpkg -l" in
/root, so I have a list of all installed packages and what version is
installed.

Is it possible to use this information to recreate the data dpkg needs
to operate?  What exactly is needed?

[I realize that I could just reinstall all the packages from scratch.
But that would entail answering lots of debconf questions, and doing a
lot of merging of conffiles since many packages will have been updated
since the laptop was lost.  (It was a while ago and I follow testing.)
So I'm hoping to avoid a reinstall.]

After getting dpkg working, are there any suggestions about how to
restore the other parts of /var?

Thanks for any advice.  Please cc me on replies.

Dan

-- 
Dan Christensen
jdc@uwo.ca