Ubuntu Tricks – how to generate a list of installed packages and use it to reinstall packages

You’ve got my attention. I am planning to perform a reformat of my PC, so this will definintely come in handy. Cheers!

Hmm. Thats a nifty one. Thanks. Will certainly come in handy.

– Mskadu

Damn, that’s what I was looking for!!

Just fyi, the 1st command, “dpkg –get-selections | grep -v deinstall > ubuntu-files”, does not work if you simply copy/paste it. Because when you typed, probably it merged the two “–” into one “–”, so, simply do this:
dpkg –get-selections | grep -v deinstall > ubuntu-files

Ok, ok, it’s quite obvious. But it took me around 5s to figure out.

No os esforceis, el sistema se come los 2 guiones y los transforma en uno. Lo correcto son dos guiones antes de la orden (get-selections)

Thanks, I’ve been looking for docs on how to do this, much easier than I suspected! Hey, for a slicker way to backup your ubuntu-file file, cat it and pipe it to mailx for quick email action!

dpkg -–get-selections | grep -v deinstall > ubuntu-files; cat ubuntu-files | mailx -s “ubuntu-files” fak3r@fak3r.com

fak3r

Why use a file at all? Isn’t the point to have your dpkg selections backed up in email?

dpkg –get-selections | grep -v deinstall | mailx -s “dpkg-selections for $HOSTNAME” address@example.com

This long list of unique words will probably be flagged as spam.

I’m a Ubuntu/Linux newbiew, and I’m not near an ubuntu system, so please bare with me if is obvious…

Will this work without the sources list being updated? Or would you need to keep a copy of your sources as well?

Thanks!

HipJiveGuy,

If your sources list has been modified, it would need to be backed up as well.

–Lee

Wow so the Ubuntu users are discovering one of the many wonders of Debian. ‘Bout time you got caught up. 😉

great trick.thanks 🙂

Hi, nice trick, thank you. But when you save the list of file by invoking grep -v deinstall, you pick up the “purge” packages too. So I would rather use:

sudo dpkg –get-sellection | grep ” install” > ubuntu-files

To insure that just the right packages are selected. I know that this caution implies only a fw of cases so, sorry for the useless comment 😉

Bye

Nice tip:

That space-install ” install” tip earlier doesn’t work.

This one seems to do it:

dpkg –get-selections | grep “\binstall”

The slash-b matches empty space on the edge of a word, so this ensure only the complete word ‘install’ is matched.

At least I hope so… 🙂

Is there a way to list ALL ubuntu packages from CLI, I mean both installed and not-yet-installed ?

I wonder where did synaptic pkg mgr retrieve those categorized pkg info from ?

Hey man, thanks a lot! That was a breeze with Ubuntu Feisty and really simplified things for me.

Using this very handy guide and gleaning bits of info from the ubuntu forums, I created a script to perform this on bootup and copy it to my NAS. The script simply contains: #!/bin/bash sleep 30s;dpkg –get-selections | grep -v deinstall > /home/user/location_on_NAS/ubuntu-files and placed it in my /home/user/.local/bin naming it whatever you like, I named it package_list.sh The “sleep 30s” causes the script to wait 30 seconds before performing it (handy if it takes your NAS a while to wake up as mine does). Now every time on startup a fresh file is created. You could use it to… Read more »

oops, you will also need to make the file in /home/user/.local/bin executable by in a terminal executing chmod +x /home/user/.local/bin/name_of_your_script.sh

Thanks a lot, first in google and answers directly.

I’d rather postpone the grep -v till *after* saving the file, either with tee or by grepping on the ‘set-selections’ command instead. That way, I suppress the nerves of ‘discarding’ the information I might find usesful at a later day (after I wiped my system…)

Cheers

you can also perform the final step using apt-get instead of dselect:

sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get dselect-upgrade

You can have this list auto-update by adding the “dpkg –get-selections” command like so:

1. Open Menu – System – Preferences – Sessions
2. On the “Startup Programs” tab click “Add”
3. Name: Update installed files
Command: {as noted in article}
Comment: Will write a list of all installed files, which can be used to reinstall them (see {wherever you save this webpage to}
4. Click OK and Close.

Now whenever you log in the list will be updated.

Update: that didn’t work. So, this does (tested). It establishes a cron job to run on the hour: 1. Open a terminal and type: sudo /etc/cron.d/my_cron_file 2. Paste in the following: 0 * * * * dpkg –get-selections | grep -v deinstall > ubuntu-installed-files 3. Save and close the file. 4. The file will be owned and run by root; therefore it will write that file list to every logged-in users directory. If you only want it to go to yours, figure out how to make a cron job just for you. I don’t know how yet. I had to… Read more »

sudo gedit /etc/cron.d/my_cron_file

Left out “gedit”.

So, what happens if any of these previously installed packages had required a gpg key? Will it halt the installation process gracefully or wait for input?

In the “dpkg –get-selections | grep -v deinstall > ubuntu-files” command, what does the “deinstall” option do?

nice!
you can also execute the following if you replaced the hard disk.
You make a fresh install on the new disk, connect the old disk and execute:

dpkg –admindir=/media/disk-1/var/lib/dpkg –get-selections | grep -v deinstall > ubuntu-files

One little tidbit. My clean Ubuntu 11.04 install did not recognize the “sudo dselect” command. I searched the software center for that word, and installed it from there, and the restore process went just fine from there. That sure makes for a nice way to restore the software environment after screwing it up! Thanks!

Hello ArsGeek,

many thanks, it’s a very helpful post.
Is there also a way to save and restore all config files of the installed packages in the same manner?

Best regards,
Erwin

Thnks, it was what i was looking for !!!

Thanks a ton