2009/3/28 Paul E Condon <pecon...@mesanetworks.net>: > I'm convinced that the suggestion is worthwhile, but I'm having > difficulty following it. See below. > > On 2009-03-27_16:33:11, Owen Townend wrote: >> 2009/3/27 Paul E Condon <pecon...@mesanetworks.net>: >> > On 2009-03-26_19:08:32, Douglas A. Tutty wrote: >> >> >> >> Many of those packages will have been installed automatically by your >> >> package manager. ??If you use aptitude, you only need to record the >> >> packages which you manually installed: >> >> >> >> aptitude search `~i!~M' >> >> >> >> You can then install them, then aptitude will automatically install what >> >> is needed by them. >> >> >> [snip] >> > >> > Well, I may sound like an orderly person, but writing down a record of >> > each time I install something is rather more orderly than I think I >> > can ever be. ??I'm looking to program the computer to keep track of me. >> >> I think you misunderstood his suggestion, it is a method of automating >> the process... >> >> > >> > Your suggestion does raise in interesting issue: given a set of >> > installed packages in a --get-selections file, and given that the >> > dependency information is available in the packages, what is the >> > minimum set of install commands to aptitude that will reconsturct the >> > installation from scratch? Does anyone know a way to solve this >> > problem? It might be a rather difficult search problem, but it might >> > be there is some neat trick. Does anyone here know? >> > >> > I guess I could somehow search the apt system for packages that are not >> > in the depends list of any other package, but I think there are cycles >> > in the dependency linkages. The way it is used, there is no reason to >> > demand that the linkage network be free of cycles, like is required of >> > the directory tree in a file system. >> >> If you follow Douglas' suggestion above it will help in this regard. >> `$ aptitude search '~i!M'` says 'return to me the list of packages >> that are installed but aren't just dependancies or suggestions (marked >> as automatically installed)'. >> >> When you then go to restore, re-install or clone your system you can let >> aptitude figure out the dependencies for itself. >> If you use --get-selections then _all_ of those packages will be marked >> as manually installed on the new system and will _never_ be >> automatically removed as 'just' dependancies. >> >> Example summary of Douglas' solution as I understood it: >> 1) Schedule `aptitude search '~i!M' > /usr/local/backup/package_list` > ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^ > I ran this manually, and got a long list of packages. Most of the lines > began with "i A ". I tried running: > aptitude search '~i!A' > which seemed more reasonable from my limited intuition. That also gave > mostly lines beginning with "i A ". What am I missing? The documentation > seems very through, but I can't find mention of '!'. I guess it means > 'not', wouldn't have known it was available from scanning the docs. Does > it mean 'not'? [snip]
Sorry, my mistake, there was a typo, the above instead gave you a list of every installed package with an 'm' in the title... It should have been: aptitude search '~i!~M' There is a comprehensive list of available search terms here: http://algebraicthunk.net/~dburrows/projects/aptitude/doc/en/ch02s03s05.html The ones used above were these: "~i Select installed packages." "!pattern Select any package that does not match pattern." "~M Select packages that were automatically installed." cheers, Owen. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org
