Re: How can I find packages manually installed using "dpkg -i"?

[John Crawley <john@bunsenlabs.org>]

On 05/10/2023 13:15, David Wright wrote:
> On Tue 03 Oct 2023 at 19:58:57 (-0700), Mike Castle wrote:
> > (apt-mark showauto ; apt-mark showmanual) > apt-thinks-you-installed.txt
> > dpkg-query --show --showformat='${Package}\n' | grep -v -F -f
> > apt-thinks-you-installed.txt > rest.txt
> (I've added the omitted -f.)
>
> > The file "rest.txt" should have a list of packages installed that were
> > NOT installed via apt.  With any luck, it is small enough to examine
> > manually.
>
> I don't think your grep will work correctly. apt-thinks-you-installed.txt
> contains patterns, and some of those patterns are very short, for example:
> an at bc dc di gv jq mc pv tk acl ant apt bbe cpp ftp git gpg gpm kbd
> ...

Doesn't the -F option mean grep is treating each line in apt-thinks-you-installed.txt as a fixed string, not as a pattern?

However, running the above commands here results in a short (~10) list of packages none of which I have installed.
dpkg-query --show --showformat='${db:Status-Abbrev} ${Package}\n' outputs a few lines that don't start with  "ii" like all the installed packages. I guess they need to be filtered out?

--
John