apt-get system reinstallation

[Derek Broughton]

NoOp wrote:

> Reinstalling coreutils (via apt-get install --reinstall coreutils) works
> fine, as does debianutils. But the 'sudo aptitude reinstall ~i' provides
> the same error, so it must be in the order of the install attempt.

Duh!  Sorry, of course "reinstall ~i" is _still_ going to reinstall the same
thing anyway :-(  Really, I don't see this as a very worthwhile
exercise.  "reinstall" is used mostly for situations where you've broken a
package, and there doesn't seem much likelihood that the OP has broken any
package himself.

... 
> So, I don't think that the command will work unless you go through each
> one that has problems and exclude the problem packages one by one.

Pretty much - that's what I meant when I said "you'll have a lot of things
that need to be fixed this way".  I can't say I quite agree that this is
what update-manager is supposed to handle, as I don't think there's a way
to make update-manager to reinstalls, either.
-- 
derek