dpkg get-selections set-selections
2009-05-11
Whenever I build a new machine I find the for first few days and weeks I keep running into commands that are not installed. The solution is to dump all the packages on an exiting machine you use and apt-get install them on the new machine, like this:
# On your existing machine # dpkg --get-selections > packages
This will dump out all the packages you have installed on an existing machine. I went through and deleted anything that I didn't want to install my new machine. You can then take this file to the next machine and tell apt that you want the packages installed:
# scp packages remote.machine.example.com: # cat pacakges | dpkg --set-selections # apt-get dselect-upgrade