[PLUG] Resolved: Ubuntu 10.04 Install Problems

Larry Williams larryw at holbrookmasons.org
Sun Jun 13 00:12:27 UTC 2010


On 06/12/2010 04:39 PM, Richard C. Steffens wrote:
>  I suspect this will be a much harder project since I have yet to find
>  a way to keep track of all the things that I install, and how I
>  installed them.

Aptitude helps in a small way. In /var/log/apt, at least on my 10.04 
machine, are two files. The first, history.log, shows what was 
installed, removed and purged and when. It doesn't show what process did 
it (aptitude, synaptic, etc.), nor does it show upgrades or updates.

The other file, term.log, is the terminal output one may observe during 
an install/update/remove process, including errors. It also appears to 
not show output from any process invoked during package setup.

I would suspect that, working from these two files it may be possible to 
determine when a package was installed and, therefore, could point you 
to files that were created and modified shortly thereafter.

Personally, I created an install script and keep copies of all the 
config files. When I upgrade I tweak the install script for the new 
repos and then let it do the install and file copying for me. It works 
sometimes, and others not so well. But at least I have config files I 
can manually copy if necessary.

 > Also, I've noticed that some programs that were
>  available in Ubuntu 8 are no longer easily available on either 9 or
>  10.

This appears true for a lot of programs. Unfortunately, there appears no 
easy process: http://ubuntuforums.org/archive/index.php/t-1473995.html 
for example. You might end up having to go old school and compile from 
source.

Larry



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