Fwd: How to flag packages as manually installed?

[Robert Parker <rlp1938@gmail.com>]

So as to keep the same software set from one machine to another I use
aptoncd and copy the contents of the iso to /var/cache/apt/archives
and install the set using apt-get install -f.
>From then on every time I use apt-get I get nagged to remove a list of
packages which have been auto installed by using apt-get autoremove.
I work around this by copying the list of packages to be removed into
a bash script and apt-get -y install each of these packages in turn.
All I get is a message saying that the package is the latest version
and that it has been marked as manually installed.

This is just a kludge and what I'd like to know is if there is some
more elegant way of recording these packages as manually installed?

Thanks
Bob Parker