Re: Question about get-selections
2009/3/28 Paul E Condon <pecondon@mesanetworks.net>:
> I'm convinced that the suggestion is worthwhile, but I'm having
> difficulty following it. See below.
>
> On 2009-03-27_16:33:11, Owen Townend wrote:
>> 2009/3/27 Paul E Condon <pecondon@mesanetworks.net>:
>> > On 2009-03-26_19:08:32, Douglas A. Tutty wrote:
>> >>
>> >> 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.
>> >>
>> [snip]
>> >
>> > Well, I may sound like an orderly person, but writing down a record of
>> > each time I install something is rather more orderly than I think I
>> > can ever be. ??I'm looking to program the computer to keep track of me.
>>
>> I think you misunderstood his suggestion, it is a method of automating
>> the process...
>>
>> >
>> > Your suggestion does raise in interesting issue: given a set of
>> > installed packages in a --get-selections file, and given that the
>> > dependency information is available in the packages, what is the
>> > minimum set of install commands to aptitude that will reconsturct the
>> > installation from scratch? Does anyone know a way to solve this
>> > problem? It might be a rather difficult search problem, but it might
>> > be there is some neat trick. Does anyone here know?
>> >
>> > I guess I could somehow search the apt system for packages that are not
>> > in the depends list of any other package, but I think there are cycles
>> > in the dependency linkages. The way it is used, there is no reason to
>> > demand that the linkage network be free of cycles, like is required of
>> > the directory tree in a file system.
>>
>> If you follow Douglas' suggestion above it will help in this regard.
>> `$ aptitude search '~i!M'` says 'return to me the list of packages
>> that are installed but aren't just dependancies or suggestions (marked
>> as automatically installed)'.
>>
>> When you then go to restore, re-install or clone your system you can let
>> aptitude figure out the dependencies for itself.
>> If you use --get-selections then _all_ of those packages will be marked
>> as manually installed on the new system and will _never_ be
>> automatically removed as 'just' dependancies.
>>
>> Example summary of Douglas' solution as I understood it:
>> 1) Schedule `aptitude search '~i!M' > /usr/local/backup/package_list`
> ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
> I ran this manually, and got a long list of packages. Most of the lines
> began with "i A ". I tried running:
> aptitude search '~i!A'
> which seemed more reasonable from my limited intuition. That also gave
> mostly lines beginning with "i A ". What am I missing? The documentation
> seems very through, but I can't find mention of '!'. I guess it means
> 'not', wouldn't have known it was available from scanning the docs. Does
> it mean 'not'?
[snip]
Sorry, my mistake, there was a typo, the above instead gave
you a list of every installed package with an 'm' in the title...
It should have been:
aptitude search '~i!~M'
There is a comprehensive list of available search terms here:
http://algebraicthunk.net/~dburrows/projects/aptitude/doc/en/ch02s03s05.html
The ones used above were these:
"~i Select installed packages."
"!pattern Select any package that does not match pattern."
"~M Select packages that were automatically installed."
cheers,
Owen.
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