Craig wants to roll back updates, not restore a list of package selections. He wants to go back to the versions of software that were on his system previous to the update. A list of package selections will not do this.
ie;
I have foo-3.0.1 installed on my system. I upgrade to foo-3.0.2. Restoring a selections list will not downgrade the package because only the package name, 'foo', is represented.
On Fri, Jan 30, 2009 at 2:27 PM, Jack quiet_celt@yahoo.com wrote:
I forgot to tell you how to save and restore for future reference.
Here they are.
To save your installed list do this:
dpkg --get selections | grep -v deinstall > packagestateXXXXXXXX.txt
where XXXXXXXX is the current date. Or use your own convention. The grep -v deinstall removes entries of packages that are marked for removal.
===============================================================
To later restore them do this:
dpkg --clear-selections dpkg --set-selections < packagestateXXXXXXXX.txt apt-get -u dselect-upgrade --purge
Note this is all commandline stuff and assumes you are logged in as root. Simply prepend "sudo" to each line if you are not root. Note, also this is destructive. I believe it might remove and purge some software not on this list. I've never tried this so proceed at your own risk. Alternatively you could remove the --purge option to not purge any config files on anything it might remove.
There might be a utility out there to do this for you, but I dn't know of it.
Brian J
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