Hi, Paolo! > > Q. Is it possible to copy an installation from a PC to another? > A. Yes (of course :-) > > Q. HOW ??? > A. ....................... > Here what we do to synchronise 4 Linux boxes: 1. Pick one to be your master. 2. set all lovely products that you want on it 3. Run "dpkg --get-selections > packages.list" on that mode 4. Redistribute this file "packages.list" on all other nodes 5. Run "cat packages.list | dpkg --set-selections" on each node 6. On each node run "dselect" and hit "Install"
All steps except 6 could be done in some smart script. Use ONLY SSH for copying and remote commands. (There are quite a few hot heads on the Internet these days). Unfortunately dselect requires that you answer certain questions, so the last step I repeat on each node. Perhaps there is a way to automate even that, but I don't know how. > Ciao, > I want to format my HD and reinstall all the system, but I don't want to > forget the list of > installed packages (or reinstall them by hand...). > Well, I'll give you an answer on somewhat different question, but perhaps it could be of some use. A friend of mind just lost his "slink" system to crackers and wanted to reinstall "slink" starting from hamm CDROM. Here are steps that I would recommend. -1. SAVE ALL /etc /home and other importand directories. 0. Prepare your old list of packages: dpkg --get-selections > packages.list 1. Install BASIC (25 Mb) installation from HAMM from CDROM 2. You want APT. Manually install packages in the following order: dpkg -i libc6_2.0.7u-4.deb dpkg -i libstdc++2.9_2.91.57-5.deb dpkg -i apt_0.1.7.deb You can get them (actually later versions now from slink) 3. Set new /etc/apt/sources.list deb http://llug.sep.bnl.gov/debian slink main contrib non-free deb ftp://ftp.demon.co.uk/pub/mirrors/linux/debian-non-US unstable non-US 4. Run dselect, "update" "install" to update your Base system 5. Take packages.list from your original setup 6. Run cat packages.list | dpkg --set-selections 7. Run dselect and hit "Install" (you can glance thru select as well) Hope that helps, Sasha.