apt-get system reinstallation

[NoOp]

On 07/09/2008 08:56 AM, Bart Silverstrim wrote:
> NoOp wrote:
>> On 07/09/2008 07:02 AM, sktsee wrote:

>>> "sudo aptitude reinstall ~i" might do it. Never tried it myself, though. 
>>> Obviously, you should backup your data before attempting. 
>> 
>> Bart: I've got a test server drive w/ubuntu-desktop & xubuntu-desktop
>> system that I just installed yesterday for testing, I'll be happy to try
>> sktsee's command on it to see what happens if you'd like. That way you
>> won't have to risk it on yours first.
> 
> Thanks. That might be interesting information to know the outcome of for 
> anyone in a similar situation.

It looks as if it might work if you have no packages that you've
installed via dpkg. But if you do have dpkg's it fails:

ggserver2 at userver:~$ sudo aptitude reinstall ~i
[sudo] password for ggserver2:
Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information... Done
Initializing package states... Done
Writing extended state information... Done
Building tag database... Done
The following packages will be REINSTALLED:
  a2ps abiword abiword-common abiword-plugins acl acpi acpi-support acpid
  adduser alacarte alsa-base alsa-utils anacron apache2 apache2-mpm-prefork
  apache2-utils apache2.2-common apmd app-install-data
  app-install-data-commercial apparmor apparmor-utils apport apport-gtk apt
  apt-utils aptitude apturl aspell at at-spi avahi-autoipd avahi-daemon
etc., etc., etc.
then
0 packages upgraded, 0 newly installed, 1193 reinstalled, 0 to remove
and 0 not upgraded.
Need to get 45.4MB/486MB of archives. After unpacking 0B will be used.
Writing extended state information... Error!
E: I wasn't able to locate file for the nxclient package. This might
mean you need to manually fix this package.
ggserver2 at userver:~$

NX is the only package that I have on that system that I installed with
dpkg, so I'll blow it out and try the command again. In the interim,
perhaps sktsee or someone can advise of a similar command with exceptions?