Re: Return a Debian system to a pristine state
songbird wrote:
> >
> > A production system, especially a desktop system, tends to accumulate
> > unnecessary packages. Users install software for testing, then forget
> > about it, or it falls into disuse...
> >
> > In FreeBSD, you can always run "pkg delete -a" and return to the
> > post-install state (well, almost). This command will remove all the
> > third-party packages added to the base system after installation
> > (modified files under /usr/local/ will remain).
> >
> > What's the procedure for Debian?
>
> i don't think there is any one procedure as there are so
> many different requirements that people can have and the
> size of the installation may be quite different.
As I wrote to Dan, a pristine state could be a list of packages
at the moment of the first boot. Yes, it would be different for
different installations, I don't see it as a major problem.
>
> when someone specifies a production system to me that means
> they are likely running stable and not testing or unstable.
Irrelevant for the question.
>
> you can find some information about what packages and
> versions in /var/log/install and /var/log/apt if you've kept
> those files.
>
> if as time has been long enough there may be updates from
> the initial installed versions so i don't think you can always
> count on downgrading to work for those.
An automatic tool would be useful to analyze the above. I somehow
expected something like that to exist.
>
> if you desire a specific image of a system to always be able
> to boot and work then there would have to be some other way
> to do that IMO. i have not yet used timeshift as my backup
> and recovery needs are not that great (instead i keep other
> bootable versions available including one on a USB stick).
>
> there are other partition copying utilties and schemes that
> can be used, but i've not had to mess with them recently enough.
> a long time ago i was using partclone which did what i needed
> it to do.
No, backups and images is already a different story. Am I expected to
always manually document somewhere that I installed some bloated piece
of software, just to be able to remove it (and its dependencies) later
when I don't need it?
--
Victor Sudakov, VAS4-RIPE, VAS47-RIPN
2:5005/49@fidonet http://vas.tomsk.ru/
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