Replicating packages on Debian

[William O'Higgins Witteman]

On Thu, Feb 21, 2008 at 12:38:50PM -0500, CLIFFORD ILKAY wrote:
> George Nicol wrote:
>> 1) On machine #1:
>>
>>    dpkg --get-selections > packages.txt
>>
>>    This creates a list of installed (and removed) packages.
>>
>> 2) Do a base install on machine #2.
>>
>> 3) Move packages.txt to machine #2.
>>
>> 4) On machine #2:
>>
>>    dpkg --set-selections < packages.txt

Thanks to several who sent the above commands - I failed to RTFM for
dpkg - I had focused on apt - and I am grateful for the kind direction
to the correct source.

>> 5) On machine #2:
>>
>>    dselect install
>>
>> 6) Bask in the light of your newly cloned machine.

I had figured out step 6, but 5 was the missing link - thank you.

>> One limitation: If you are running something old, then your packages.txt
>> will not point to the right version of the packages. If you are working
>> with a recent version of your distro, then this is not a problem.
>
> I always replace Exim with Postfix. How does this method deal with that  
> situation?

The output of --get-selections has the exim packages set for removal,
and the postfix ones for installation.  So, the above process works as
well as I knew it should.  Thanks to all.
-- 

yours,

William

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