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Re: How to consistently install a set of packages?



David wrote:
> I have a small number of personal different-hardware PCs, each with
> the same set of different OS currently managed by grub v1. With
> unison, rsync, scripts, and some care I successfully keep all OS and
> the shared data in sync. It works great for my needs.
> 
> I now intend to add Debian wheezy and hope that it becomes my
> preferred OS to replace an outdated Fedora. I already have a bare
> minimal base install of wheezy on each PC, achieved by running
> debian-installer manually in expert mode and unselecting everything on
> the tasksel page.
> 
> I know the set of Debian packages I next want to install, without
> recommends (like aptitude -R). These will be served locally by approx.
> I keep the installation minimal for my needs only, and avoid gnome.
> 
> Because some packages create users and groups, I want to be sure that
> these packages are installed in the same sequence on every PC so that
> numeric uid & gid in /etc/passwd and /etc/group end up the same on all
> PCs. This will make admin easier when keeping the shared data in sync
> if the numeric uid and gid are the same in every OS.
> 
> To do the install I could use a shell script of many 'aptitude -R'
> calls, but I don't know the required order to satisfy dependencies.
> 
> I could give 'aptitude -R' the large list of of packages, but how do I
> know that its depsolver will always install the packages in the same
> order? Perhaps I could do this once, and then get from some logfile
> the actual order that was used?
> 
> google isnt helping me, results are dominated by debian-installer and
> preseeding but I think that is not relevant to my question because I
> already have installed debian manually. Please correct me if I am
> wrong.
> 
> Are there any better methods I should be aware of, to ensure that
> everywhere the packages are installed in the same sequence?
> 
The only thing I can suggest (and I am by no means an expert), is to
create the users/groups before installing the packages. You can use dpkg
--get/--set-selections to set the selection state of the packages, but
as this doesn't actually install anything, I would doubt it would give
apt-get/aptitude any hints about ordering, but if the user/groups
existed before hand it should still be ok.
-- 
James Richardson   
http://jamestechnotes.com

I prefer encrypted email: keyid D8467AFB

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