Re: Question about get-selections

["Douglas A. Tutty" <dtutty@vianet.ca>]

On Thu, Mar 26, 2009 at 04:26:12PM -0600, Paul E Condon wrote:
 
> But I think I would like to have a record of what packages were
> actually installed. So I'm thinking of writing a script, to be run
> nightly, that puts a fresh copy of my selections in /etc/apt, e.g.
> 
> # dpkg --get-selections >/etc/apt/selections

Many of those packages will have been installed automatically by your
package manager.  If you use aptitude, you only need to record the
packages which you manually installed:

aptitude search `~i!~M'

You can then install them, then aptitude will automatically install what
is needed by them.

I wouldn't put my backup info in /etc/apt.  Most of what is in /etc/
(just like the rest of the file system) is managed by packages which are
managed by apt.  You may find that what you put in /etc/apt gets changed
(I don't know, but I wouldn't risk it).

I keep my backups in /var/local/backup.

Your remote script can run a local script to create the backups, then
rsync what you want to the remote (or any other) box.

Doug.