[balug-talk] cloning a Debian installation

[Joe Brenner]

Will Lowe <harpo at thebackrow.net> wrote:

> Joe Brenner wrote:

> > What's your favorite method for duplicating a Debian (or Debian-based)
> > installation from one machine on to another?  
> > 
> > At the moment I'm just looking for a way to get a listing of installed 
> > packages on one box, and using that list to install packages on another...
> > 
> > And I've been playing around with the "wajig" program, which provides a
> > reasonably convenient command-line interface (a little better than
> > aptitude, to my eye): 
> > 
> >   http://www.togaware.com/wajig
> > 
> > So on the machine to be cloned, I might do this:
> > 
> >   wajig snapshot > /tmp/packages_with_versions.lst
> >   cat packages_with_versions.lst | cut -d= -f1 > packages.lst
> > 
> > Then, after copying packages.lst to the target machine, I might 
> > just do something like this: 
> > 
> >   su 
> >   cat packages.lst | xargs apt-get -y install
> > 
> > Does that sound about right?  

> dpkg --list '*' > file.list
> 
> Copy file.list and /etc/apt/sources.list to the target machine,  and then:
> 
> dpkg --set-selections < file.list
> apt-get -u dselect-upgrade

Thanks, that looks like a good way to go about it... 

I find it's a minor problem with the Debian way of doing things
that in advance you don't know which command handles what you're
interested in, so you don't know which man page to start with.

I had some hopes for "wajig" as a one-stop-shopping front-end,
but it looks like there are some gaps in the story with it.