saving package info for a fresh reinstall

["Robert P. J. Day" <rpjday@crashcourse.ca>]

  hi, i want to save all my package info off to the side and do a
re-install of lenny so i can restructure my logical volumes.  (i
realize i can do that manually with the various lvm commands but given
how much i want to move things around, and that this install is still
on a new server which isn't being used yet so i have no data to save,
it's just easier to reinstall).

  i can see the idea of using dpkg with --get-selections and
--set-selections, and googling showed me this:

http://sunoano.name/ws/public_xhtml/debian_notes_cheat_sheets.html#get_and_or_set_list%20_of_installed_packages

but as i read that, i saw references to the two commands:

  debconf-get-selections
  debconf-set-selections

yet i see only the first of those two on this system (the set
variation).  that seems odd -- i can't find the first one.  am i
missing something obvious?

  in any event, if i have little configuration information to
preserve, what's the simplest recipe to save my pkg info, then restore
it after a really basic fresh install?  thanks.

rday
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Robert P. J. Day                               Waterloo, Ontario, CANADA

        Linux Consulting, Training and Annoying Kernel Pedantry.

Web page:                                          http://crashcourse.ca
Twitter:                                       http://twitter.com/rpjday
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