Dan Christensen <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> [2002-10-21 23:23:25 -0400]: > Luckily, before running each backup I save the output of "dpkg -l" in > /root, so I have a list of all installed packages and what version is > installed.
I would ignore the versions unless you really care about something in particular and just use the list of versions installed. > Is it possible to use this information to recreate the data dpkg needs > to operate? What exactly is needed? I would compare the list with a list of what you just installed, diff them, and install the as yet uninstalled packages. > [I realize that I could just reinstall all the packages from scratch. > But that would entail answering lots of debconf questions, and doing a > lot of merging of conffiles since many packages will have been updated > since the laptop was lost. (It was a while ago and I follow testing.) > So I'm hoping to avoid a reinstall.] > > After getting dpkg working, are there any suggestions about how to > restore the other parts of /var? Hmm... You rebuilt the machine from backup and therefore dpkg is not functional at this time? > Thanks for any advice. Please cc me on replies. Probably what I would do is this. This is me and you will just have to take the advice at face value and work with it. I would install a minimal Debian system from scratch. This ensures a working dpkg. Then I would restore /etc from backup which contains all of the configuration files and personality of the previous system. Also restore /usr/local and /home and anything you may have installed elsewhere such as /opt. Then I would install all of the packages that I was missing. After doing the reinstall I would 'diff -ru /backup/etc /etc' and possibly reset anything that I incorrectly answered during the interactive install, possibly by restoring /etc again to correct those files. Assuming that the backup of those files was good to begin with. This might be a good time to do spring cleaning. Reboot. The system should boot and look pretty close to your old system. A package which is installed that sees a configuration file already present in /etc _should_ avoid asking you questions and just use that configuration file. However, each package will have varying quality there and many will still ask you a zillion questions all over again. (Some like am-utils will ask a bunch of questions which you must answer, then after asking see the previous configuration file and only then give you the opportunity to use the previous file discarding the answers you were forced to answer but did not need to. Sigh.) In general Debian packages are way to chatty and ask way too many questions during an install. You just have to put up with it in many cases. If you plan to reset /etc after doing all of the installs again then what you answer probably won't matter since they will get overwritten. Again, this is what I would do. YMMV. Good luck! Alternatively you could do this just to get a good copy of /var which matches what is on your system. Back that up. Then restore the old everything else with the new /var onto your system. If you had a spare disk so as not to undo your present restore that would seem feasible. Bob
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