apt-get system reinstallation

[andy baxter]

Bart Silverstrim wrote:
> Is there a simple way to try a "reinstall" of everything currently 
> installed on my system?
>
>   
I have written up a page on how to do this here:

https://help.ubuntu.com/community/ReinstallingSamePackages

get back to me if you need any help with this. Not sure if it will solve 
your original problem though.
> 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.
>   
In this case you could try just using 'dpkg --get-selections > 
<filename>' onto a flash disk or similar to record the state of the 
system on each machine, then compare the lists using diff (I think they 
are already sorted; if not use sort first on each list).

andy.