Has the procedure for working with 'dpkg --set-selections' changed at some
point?
According to the dpkg man page, the sequence
dpkg --get-selections > selection_list
[copy selection_list to a remote machine]
dpkg --clear-selections
dpkg --set-selections < selection_list
should result in the second machine having the exact same set of package
selections as the first one. I seem to recall that I did this once in the past,
and it worked as expected.
Currently (wheezy with bits of sid), however, when I try this I get a flood of
messages of the form
dpkg: warning: package not in database at line X: packagename
and the warned-about packages do not get selected for installation (as reported
by a subsequent 'dpkg --get-selections' on the second machine).
Specifically, I get one such message for every package which was *not* already
in the list which would have been printed by 'dpkg --get-selections' on the
second machine. I suspect that this is also the same as the list of packages
from /var/lib/dpkg/available.
(The '--clear-selections' step is not necessary to reproduce the problem. I
included it on the basis of the recommendation in the man page, on the off
chance that it would fix something.)
It appears that 'dpkg --set-selections' will not set the status of a package
which it doesn't know about. That wouldn't necessarily be unreasonable, except
that the packages it knows about seem to be limited to only packages which are
(or have been) installed on the current system.
As a result, the example given in the dpkg man page for using '--set-selections'
doesn't seem to work.
Is there something I'm missing which would let this work? Or should I file a bug
against dpkg, to either get this working again, or at least get the man page
fixed to match reality?
--
The Wanderer
Warning: Simply because I argue an issue does not mean I agree with any
side of it.
Every time you let somebody set a limit they start moving it.
- LiveJournal user antonia_tiger
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