Is there a way to reinstall all installed (.deb) packages with a terminal command. I think some package is corrupted (I don't know which) and I don't want to reinstall the OS (which will need a lot of energy and time to recusotomize).
Asked
Active
Viewed 122 times
1 Answers
1
You first need to understand a few things.
First, apt-get / dpkg / apt , by default, will not overwrite configuration files if they already exist.
You can over ride this behavior.
sudo apt-get -o Dpkg::Options::="--force-overwrite" install python-profiler
see : Force apt-get to overwrite file installed by another package
This is one of the reasons why, unlike other OS perhaps, re-installing a package typically will not fix a problem.
You can purge and re-install a package, as purge will remove config files.
But even a purge will not remove config files in your home directory.
Second, unless you manually edited a system file, reinstalling will not help as you did not really change anything. This is because user specific settings are stored in $HOME .
Third, custom configuration files, for your keyboard or other settings etc, reside in your home directory. These user files will not change by re-installing a package, you need to delete or edit the files manually.
Fourth, nothing in the question you linked suggested re-installing your entire system would fix your problem.
To debug your problem, identify your hardware and check your logs for errors.
