apt-get system reinstallation

[Brad Sims]

On Wednesday 09 July 2008, Bart Silverstrim wrote:
> Is there a simple way to try a "reinstall" of everything currently 
> installed on my system?
> 
> I have 2 Ubuntu 8.04 systems, one where youtube videos crash Firefox 
> constantly (flash problem?) and the other doesn't seem have trouble 
> playing flash videos. So while the latest Firefox and flash plugins from 
> the repos may have troubles, it may be a combination problem of some 
> kind on the one that is causing issues?
> 
> I didn't know if there was a simple way to try an in-place reinstall of 
> software to see if it was a linking or dependancy issue that could be 
> causing flash videos to keel over on the one system.
> 
This little program will do what you want.

<Start Script>
#!/bin/bash

# This script *MUST* be ran either
#     under sudo.

# The 'COLUMNS=200 dpkg -l' part 
#     displays intalled packages

# The `awk '/^ii/ {print $2}' part
#     strips out the package names
#     from the previous list

# The 'xargs apt-get --reinstall install' part
#      uses each package name as an argument to
#      apt-get; 'the --reinstall install' tells
#      apt to reinstall the package if it is 
#      already there

COLUMNS=200 dpkg -l | awk '/^ii/ {print $2}' | xargs apt-get --reinstall install
<End Script>

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