On Tue, 23 Feb 1999, Bernhard Dobbels wrote: > Recently, i have done something really stupid: rm -r /var > and, yes, everything was away, including my /var/backup directory! > Yes, i know, it's no place for a backup. > Everyting is restored now. > > Just all the info that dpkg put there is away and i cannot run dpkg > anymore. Is there some kind of rebuilding-tool for recreating the > database?
Not that I know of, but you might want to cross-reference the output of "find /" and the Contents-i386.gz file, maybe using awk or some such, this way you could know the packages you had installed. "ls /usr/doc" should be also a good starting point, since every package is supposed to come with an /usr/doc/<package> directory. This will give you a list of installed packages. If you want a "clean system" you might want to backup /etc, /home, /usr/local, etc. and start from scratch. You can use the list of installed packages and "dpkg --set-selections" to obtain a freshly installed "clone" of your old system. [ This is probably what I would do, because I'm used to "clone" my system from time to time, but you might want to try some other way to solve this ].
