Monique Y. Mudama wrote: > > Is there any particular reason that you don't want to use aptitude or > dselect to interactively change the installed packages? > > -- > monique
sorry, there was more to the story than i guess i led you to believe. here's a bit more information. the existing debian box that i was given is basically a test machine. the company wanted to see if there was an efficient way of getting machines used here to a "baseline" setup. if this could be done without reinstalling then we could keep the machines running Debian. if not, then another distribution would be chosen (i don't pretend to understand the reasoning for their thinking about changing). wanting to establish a "baseline" for the packages we took a fresh box, loaded only what would be used, and generated a package list. using the commands with the generated package list: dpkg --set-selections < packages.txt apt-get dselect-upgrade we showed how easy it was to totally change the test bed of machines (initially one, then five). we are now going to roll out these changes to all our machines in this complex (30+) and another 15-20 machines in two satellite offices. thanks all, Preston
