songbird wrote: > > > > A production system, especially a desktop system, tends to accumulate > > unnecessary packages. Users install software for testing, then forget > > about it, or it falls into disuse... > > > > In FreeBSD, you can always run "pkg delete -a" and return to the > > post-install state (well, almost). This command will remove all the > > third-party packages added to the base system after installation > > (modified files under /usr/local/ will remain). > > > > What's the procedure for Debian? > > i don't think there is any one procedure as there are so > many different requirements that people can have and the > size of the installation may be quite different.
As I wrote to Dan, a pristine state could be a list of packages at the moment of the first boot. Yes, it would be different for different installations, I don't see it as a major problem. > > when someone specifies a production system to me that means > they are likely running stable and not testing or unstable. Irrelevant for the question. > > you can find some information about what packages and > versions in /var/log/install and /var/log/apt if you've kept > those files. > > if as time has been long enough there may be updates from > the initial installed versions so i don't think you can always > count on downgrading to work for those. An automatic tool would be useful to analyze the above. I somehow expected something like that to exist. > > if you desire a specific image of a system to always be able > to boot and work then there would have to be some other way > to do that IMO. i have not yet used timeshift as my backup > and recovery needs are not that great (instead i keep other > bootable versions available including one on a USB stick). > > there are other partition copying utilties and schemes that > can be used, but i've not had to mess with them recently enough. > a long time ago i was using partclone which did what i needed > it to do. No, backups and images is already a different story. Am I expected to always manually document somewhere that I installed some bloated piece of software, just to be able to remove it (and its dependencies) later when I don't need it? -- Victor Sudakov, VAS4-RIPE, VAS47-RIPN 2:5005/49@fidonet http://vas.tomsk.ru/
