Hi Chris, > HELP - I've royally screwed up my dselect package listing. I was working in > dselect to get rid of packages that I never use on my server (games, xemacs, > etc) and had a finger slip that removed a required package and exited to the > menu. Now almost every package is set to remove. How can I get the packages > list rebuilt? > > If this has to be done manually, is there a way to force apt/dselect to > downgrade to slink (the slink cd is in the cd changer on the machine and the > machine is currently running potato)? > Look in the directory /var/lib/dpkg at the files status *. there should be a "status-old" file that MAY match your package listing before your dselect screw-up. If it does match, then rename this file to "status" and run dselect to check it. If not, then look at the files "status.yesterday.*", one of them may match your actual and/or desired status. If this is so, then copy that file to "./status". I've done this when in a similar situation, and suffered no ill effects. I hope this is what you're looking for.
-ptw
