This is a great way to backup a system without actually backing it up completely, but I like to add at least one additional step, that backs up the configuration of the packages themselves.
First you need to install the deconf-utils package:

sudo apt-get install deconf-utils

That will give you the debconf-get-selections utility that will give you the contents of the debian package configs in a format that can be read by debconf-set-selections; which is already on the system so you don't need any extra packages installed when you do the restore.

debconf-get-selections >~/debconf-selections

Then all you need to do is add:

debconf-set-selections ~/debconf-selections

before the dselect command.

Alternatively you can skip loading the dselect command altogether and just use in place of it:

apt-get dselect-upgrade

Brian Cluff

On 12/30/2013 09:57 AM, Kevin Fries wrote:

saw this at askubuntu, and it looks quite complete:

A quick way of backing up a list of programs is to run this:

dpkg --get-selections > ~/Package.list
sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list ~/sources.list
sudo apt-key exportall > ~/Repo.keys
It will back them up in a format that dpkg can read for after your
reinstall, like this:

sudo apt-key add ~/Repo.keys
sudo cp ~/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install dselect
sudo dpkg --set-selections < ~/Package.list
sudo apt-get dselect-upgrade -y
Settings and Personal Data
Before you reinstall, you should probably back up the settings from some
of your programs, this can easily be done by grabbing folders from /etc
and all the content from your user directory (not just the stuff you can
see in nautilus!):

rsync --progress /home/`whoami` /path/to/user/profile/backup/here
After you reinstall, you can restore it with:

rsync --progress /path/to/user/profile/backup/here /home/`whoami`
So all together as a pseudo-bash script.
This assumes there is only one user on the machine (remove /'whoami'
otherwise) and that you used the same username on both installs (modify
dest. of rsync otherwise).

dpkg --get-selections > ~/Package.list
sudo cp /etc/apt/sources.list ~/sources.list
sudo apt-key exportall > ~/Repo.keys
rsync --progress /home/`whoami` /path/to/user/profile/backup/here

##  Reinstall now

rsync --progress /path/to/user/profile/backup/here /home/`whoami`
sudo apt-key add ~/Repo.keys
sudo cp ~/sources.list /etc/apt/sources.list
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt-get install dselect
sudo dpkg --set-selections < ~/Package.list
sudo dselect


On Fri, Dec 27, 2013 at 1:21 PM, Michael Havens <bmike1@gmail.com

<mailto:bmike1@gmail.com>> wrote:

    well.... it looks as if I may have to reinstall my laptop (which
    sucks) if we can't get x working again. I  just realized something I
    didn't do: I did not write down all the ppa addresses. So what I
    would like to know is in which file are the ppa s kept? then I can
    scp that to the tv server and if we can't get x working again it
    won't be as painful a bite. Thanks:-)
    :-)~MIKE~(-:

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  too, can become great.”

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