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Redirecting text from a file into a command

Hi

I don't really know what I'm doing wrong here, but what I'm essentially trying to do is to get a list of packages into the command "apt-get install" but I can't seem to get it to work. The text file in question I have filtered out a list of all the installed packages on my system so that (heaven forbid) I lose my machine I can recover it quickly from a base install. I've tried this two ways:

Code:

$ sudo apt-get install < ./packages.txt

...so I then tried it this way:

Code:

cat ./packages.txt | sudo apt-get install

The file "packages.txt" is just a text file and has a package name on each line... here's the output from the first ten lines to give you an idea (it's quite a long file...!)

Code:

acl

acpi-support

acpid

adduser

akregator

alsa-base

alsa-utils

amarok

amarok-common

anacron

I'm using Kubuntu 9.04 on x64... not that this is really relelvant to this issue :D

I know this is a pretty lame question to ask, but I've tried fixing it myself and can't get anywhere...

I'm installing Apt now to test it out, but at first glance you might want to try > instead of <.

Thanks for looking at it - if you use the code:

Code:

$ cat ./packages.txt > sudo apt-get install

...this (as I suspected it would) basically copies the file packages.txt into a new file called sudo and the following errors are seen:

Code:

$ cat ./test.txt > sudo apt-get install

cat: apt-get: No such file or directory

cat: install: No such file or directory

Thanks for trying though :D

No, I mean:

Code:

sudo apt-get install > ./packages.txt

and instead of "install", isn't there a "list" function?

I've got APT, now I've got to update my list.

Try

Code:

apt-get install $(cat <textfile>)

the names need to be in one line in the file
in your case try

Code:

aptitude install $(cat <textfile>)