[PLUG] Re: Is there a debian installed packages backup script?

[William Leake]

> Jeme A Brelin wrote:
> 
> I have a cron job that dumps my dpkg selections to a file in /etc, 
> William.  It's VERY trivial and straightforward and contains all the data 
> I need to restore a new system.  I just use vi and some carefully 
> constructed regex replacements to trim the list down to currently 
> installed selections and restore those with something like
> 
> $ apt-get update       #  Read my new sources.list and get package data
> $ apt-get dist-upgrade     #  Update installed packages from new archives
> $ apt-get install `cat /etc/selections`  #  Restore packages from old list
> 
> This can be done from a very minimal install of pretty much any version of 
> Debian.
> 
> J.

Thanks Jeme, that will accomplish most of the functionality I am looking
for.  How do you read the dpkg selections, and what is the trimming
syntax?  I would appreciate it if you could either post the script(s)
here, or for security reasons send it directly to me.  Hopefully that
request is not contrary to mailing list protocol :)

william dot leake at gmail dot com

Thanks,
W. Reid Leake