How to reinstall *everything*?

[Derek Broughton]

Alexander Skwar wrote:

> · Constantine Evans <constantine at evanslabs.org>:
> 
>> Apt-based
>> reinstallation will not purge the configuration files for the packages,
> 
> Yep. That's why I wanted to do a reinstallation in the sense
> of reinstalling all the installed packages.
> 
>> so it is quite likely that reinstalling everything would not fix the
>> issues you are having.
> 
> I disagree. The configuration hasn't been changed, but all of
> a sudden the system isn't working fine anymore.
> 
>> You can make a list of installed packages, and reinstall all of them
>> after reinstalling the system.
> 
> How?

# aptitude search '~i' | tr -s ' ' | cut -f 2 -d ' ' 

- ie, search for "installed" packages; strip excess blanks; select the
second field.

I tend to agree with Constantine, though, that unless you have a hardware
problem (oops - you do!) there must be a change in config.  Given that you
have a drive partition failing, perhaps there's a relationship...
-- 
derek