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

[Florian Kulzer <debian-lists@florian-kulzer.eu>]

On Sat, Jan 15, 2011 at 13:01:30 +0200, Andrei Popescu wrote:

 [...]

> 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
> 
> This will try to remove everything and I have to abort
> 
>     aptitude --schedule-only markauto ~i
> 
> Seems to be doing the first part, but I can't convince aptitude to 
> unmark my list (which I processed to not contain unneeded space and 
> newlines):
> 
>     aptitude unmarkauto < pkg.list
> 
> has no effect
> 
>     aptitude install < pkg.list
> 
> first tries to remove everything and when I say 'n' it starts crunching 
> on my processor.
> 
> Any other suggestions?

  aptitude --schedule-only unmarkauto $(cat pkg.list)

is somewhat clumsy, but it seems to work here. I only tried a simple
test case with a list of two packages, and I did not test if
--schedule-only is really necessary. If your list of packages exceeds
the maximum number of command line arguments then you have to split the
file. Backticks should also work if you want to avoid the $(...)
bashism.

-- 
Regards,            |
          Florian   | http://www.florian-kulzer.eu