[Cialug] Updates after install

[Tom Sellers]

I'm no sure that I understand all that you have related here but I Will see if I can walk through the steps that you related.  I'm not sure that I want to reload again but if I do I will definately consider doing what your suggest.


--- On Mon, 2/2/09, Daniel A. Ramaley <daniel.ramaley at drake.edu> wrote:

> From: Daniel A. Ramaley <daniel.ramaley at drake.edu>
> Subject: Re: [Cialug] Updates after install
> To: "Central Iowa Linux Users Group" <cialug at cialug.org>
> Date: Monday, February 2, 2009, 9:27 AM
> On Friday January 30 2009 16:54, Tom Sellers wrote:
> >Is there a way to see what updates have been installed
> to my computer
> > since loading Debian 4.0 from CD?
> 
> Probably not immediately helpful for you, but right after
> setting up a 
> new machine i always run this:
>     # aptitude search '~i!~M' -F '%p' | sed
> -e 's/ *$//;' \
>         | sort > /root/base_packages.txt
> 
> What that does is gets a list of packages that were
> manually selected 
> for install (aka, not automatically installed). It will
> include 
> packages that were part of the base install, as well as
> those you've 
> selected. Later if you run the same query and save to a
> different file, 
> it is easy to see what changes have been made. Also, if you
> keep a 
> backup of that file, it is fairly easy to set up an almost
> identical 
> machine using something like this:
>     # aptitude --prompt install `xargs < packages.txt`
>     # aptitude --prompt unmarkauto `xargs <
> packages.txt`
> 
> Also possibly useful, if you want to see packages that were
> part of the 
> initial install but that you've since removed, this
> query should get 
> them:
>     # aptitude search \
>         '!~i(~pimportant|~pstandard|~prequired)' -F
> '%p %P'
> 
> All of these commands were pulled from my Debian
> installation notes.
> 
> Now, more to your specific question. If i had installed
> Debian from CD 
> but wanted to know what changes had been made since then,
> i'd probably 
> try a query similar to the one i listed first but including
> the version 
> numbers of each package (try adding "%v" to the
> -F argument). Then i'd 
> get a list of all packages from the CD (again with their
> version 
> numbers), munge both to be in the same format, and do a
> diff. I don't 
> know what your comfort level with the command line is
> though; there's 
> probably a GUI way to do it but it would have to be up to
> someone else 
> to figure that out.
> 
> ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> Dan Ramaley                            Dial Center 118,
> Drake University
> Network Programmer/Analyst             2407 Carpenter Ave
> +1 515 271-4540                        Des Moines IA 50311
> USA
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