On 2011-03-09 20:40 +0100, Hans-J. Ullrich wrote:

> It is not a great problem, but I wondered, why non-installed packages appeared
> as to be installed.

Because they have been selected for installation (dselect sometimes
"helpfully" does that automatically when you run it as root).

> When I googled, most sites are pointing to version a) and
> some to b). The correct version is b) --> dpkg --get-selections > mylist.txt,
> (if you want, like me, ONLY installed packages). Maybe the manual should be
> improved, to make it clear?

I think the manual is clear enough, but there is one caveat: with older
dpkg versions (prior to version 1.15.4), "dpkg --get-selections '*'"
would even print packages that are purged and _not_ marked for
installation. This could be used to purge installed packages on the
target system where you feed the list to "dpkg --set-selections".

Since this is no longer possible, you should run
"dpkg --clear-selections" prior to "dpkg --set-selections" to replicate
an installation on another computer.

Sven


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> Since this is no longer possible, you should run
> "dpkg --clear-selections" prior to "dpkg --set-selections" to replicate
> an installation on another computer.
>
> Sven

Yeah, this is a good advice. I will do this, and play a little bit around with
this. Thank you for discussing this with me. Although it is no bug or other
important thing, IMO such things are worth also to mention here, as other
people might learn, too, from this list.

Have fun!

Hans


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On 2011-03-09 21:03 +0100, Hans-J. Ullrich wrote:

>> Since this is no longer possible, you should run
>> "dpkg --clear-selections" prior to "dpkg --set-selections" to replicate
>> an installation on another computer.
>
> Yeah, this is a good advice. I will do this, and play a little bit around with
> this.

I should also warn that this method will lose apt's extended states,
e.g. the information which packages were automatically installed. You
can obtain a list of those packages with "apt-mark showauto" if python
is installed.

Sven


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