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My main system (Xubuntu 20.04.) is in deep trouble. I see no hardware problems, but only very basic things are working. Web is down. My RAID is down. Several other things are flakey. I don't know if it's configuration or the actual programs.

I've made a clone of the main disk, so I can be a bit adventurous, but there are some basic tasks that I would like to do, but don't know how. The first is re-installing all the software I can. Not just the default stuff, but every package I ever installed. SO:

  1. I've read about how to do "something else" to do a refresh of the initial set of programs So I can already do that.

  2. There are various kinds of configuration files. I've been running Ubuntu for a couple of decades so there's no chance I remember them all; is there a way to find their locations? Can I ensure they are safe, or restorable?

  3. How do I reinstall the packages I have installed manually. I've got lists of all packages from three sources: (1) dpkg --get-selections, (2) apt-mark and (3) apt list, but don't see how to use them directly to cause packages to be refreshed.

In response to the first answer, I tried this script

apt update
dpkg --set-selections </PACKAGE-LISTS/b5-getsel
apt-get dselect-upgrade

but it made no changes to the installed packages, in spite of the file having >3000 lines, specifically including vim(1), which I sorely miss.

How can I debug this?

ForDummies
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1 Answers1

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this makes a list of your installed packages and export it. This is for your old system.

dpkg --get-selections > my.selections

The next imports the package.list this is for the new system. So you need the created file on your new install.

sudo dpkg --set-selections < my.selections

Now you can run

 sudo apt-get dselect-upgrade

Make sure you have the same package sources active like before.And refresh it before with

sudo apt update
nobody
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