On Wed, Aug 14, 2013 at 07:22:18AM +1000, zlinw@mcmedia.com.au wrote:
The next step depends on if it is new version of debian, in that case individual packages are selected using "dselect" after setting "install-recomends"and "install-sugests" to false (in apt.conf).
if the article is recommending dselect then it's years out of date. it was good in its day, but it really wasn't designed to cope with 30,000+ packages - it just takes too long to make your selections. IMO, the same applies to aptitude but the user-interface is a lot easier, and the dependancy/conflict resolution works better.
I have a standard (rather odd) setup with regards to selected packages, this step usually takes around 3 to 4 hours.
rather than select them manually, you can create a list of packages to install and use 'dpkg --set-selection' to select them. 'apt-get dist-upgrade' will then install them all. you can create the initial list with: dpkg --get-selection '*' > selections.txt you can then edit that with any text editor, and pipe it into to 'dpkg --set-selections' on another system. btw, easiest way to do this is to install only the base system and ssh, then reboot, and login to the new box via ssh to finish the job. you can use scp to copy the package selections list to the new machine. alternatively, just run 'apt-get install pkg1 pkg2 pkg3 ... pkgN' once you've installed the base system and rebooted it. you can, of course, put the 'apt-get install ...' command(s) into a script, and scp it to every system you need to install them on. there are numerous similar methods - the point is that it gives you the same set of standard packages on all machines without risk of forgetting any.
I will consider my next step, I will do another base package install of 7.0.0 and install lilo by hand, I may though have two goes as the procedure is trivial and see of I can find out what went wrong with grub, it was installed, the relevent files all existed in /boot.
my usual method to reinstall grub: 1. boot a rescue disk - the debian installer in rescue mode will do. note: if you run a mix of amd64 and i386 systems, remember to use the amd64 installer on amd64 boxes - you can't chroot to an amd64 system if you're running a 32 bit kernel. BTW, you *can* chroot into an i386 system from and amd64 rescue disk (if the CPU is actually 64 bit, of course). 2. get a root shell on the rescue disk 3. mount the root filesystem (and /boot if it's a separate partition) as /mnt (and /mnt/boot). e.g. if rootfs is /dev/sda3 and /boot is /dev/sda1 then: mount /dev/sda3 /mnt mount /dev/sda1 /mnt/boot 4. bind mount /proc, /sys, /dev and /dev/pts under /mnt for i in proc sys dev dev/pts ; do mount -o bind /$i /mnt/$i ; done 5. chroot /mnt 6. re-install grub. e.g. if the disk is /dev/sda then grub-install /dev/sda 7. exit from the chroot, unmount the file systems, and reboot. e.g.: exit for i in proc sys dev/pts dev boot / ; do umount /mnt/$i ; done shutdown -r now craig -- craig sanders <cas@taz.net.au> BOFH excuse #196: Me no internet, only janitor, me just wax floors.