Re: aptitude: set all packages auto-installed except given list?

[Javier Barroso <javibarroso@gmail.com>]

Hi,

On Sat, Jan 15, 2011 at 12:01 PM, Andrei Popescu
<andreimpopescu@gmail.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>
> My usual method of 'cleaning' the system was to set all installed
> packages to auto-installed and then mark one by one the ones I need to
> keep. I even have a good list generated with:
>
> aptitude -F '%?p' search '~i!~M' > bak/pkg.list
>
> Now the problem I'm facing is that (probably due to some aptitude bug
> than seems to have disappeared) most of my installed packages are set to
> manually installed. How can I:
>
> - set everything to auto-installed
> - automatically mark as manually installed the ones in the list
>
> ?
>
> I already tried (as root):
>
>    aptitude markauto ~i
Maybe, I don't known if command line length limit imposed by bash will
let to do it:

Generate an string like:

aptitude markauto  '~i!~n^package1$!~n^package2$'

If you have a packages.txt file with a package by line, do it with awk:

aptitude markauto '~i'$(awk '{printf "!~n^"$1"$";}' packages.txt)

And a similar trick marking these packages like manual installed.

Regards,