The string 'linux-pam' (not case sensitive) is not in the file.

Ok,

For obvious reasons let's make a copy of what's installed first. Run the following command:
That will save the list of your packages selections and their state into a file. Keep that file safe since it's the original standard install if you haven't installed anything yet.

Kind regards,

Eric

Ok, I did it. They all have the same state (install). Why isn't OriginalSelected.txt equal to original.txt, since they're both supposed to be the list of all the packages currently installed ?

No, the two are different. The file original.txt is only a listing of the documentation directory, assuming that all the packages you installed had been written properly with documentation. It's not by far a for sure complete list of the packages you might have had installed in your previous system.

The file you just generated is generated by the dpkg program (the Debian package management tool) including the state of the packages. It will also include packages that don't have documentation in /usr/share/doc, that's the big difference.

Kind regards,

Eric

Next, you're going to write a script.

Open a terminal and type
That will open an editor. Type in that editor the following:
Then while in the Nano editor type CTRL-O (letter o) and enter to save your file and next CTRL-X to exit the editor.

Now give executing permissions to the file with the following command:
All of this, if done correctly, will give you a script that you will call with sudo and thus open in a subshell so that for the duration of the script (the time it takes to install all the packages from the list), you should not be prompted for your password again. Make sure that the p2install.txt file is in the same directory as your autoinstall.sh script.

Now, to start installing, type the following:
If packages are already installed then nothing will be done for that package and the next one should start automatically.

Post any result/errors here please.

Kind regards,

Eric

I tried to find out the differences between original and originalselected so I wrote comm -13 original.txt originalselected.txt, but the result showed items that are in both lists. Why is that ?

Can you give an example?

If you ran that command as you typed it, you'd only see what's in originalselected because of the -13. If you want to see the full output and differences, just run:
and it'll show three columns as explained in previous post.

Kind regards,

Eric

Oh I think I understand why. It's due to the fact that every line of originalselected is followed by 'install'. Can I remove that word ?

NO, don't remove it!!!

Don't touch that originalselected.txt file at all. That's like a database of what you have installed currently and the state of those packages installed. If ever your system might be in trouble or you have to reinstall then you can use that file to automatically reinstall all the packages correctly. So don't touch it. If you want to try stuff or compare to another file then just make a copy like this:
and work on the playfile.

Kind regards,

Eric

Ok. How to remove the word 'installed' from the end of every line of playfile.txt ?
I'm sorry to delay the shell script right now, it's just that I'd really like to understand the differences between the 2 installations, given that, as you know, it wasn't me who made the first installation. Maybe there are packages that I don't need in that list.

You said that "If packages are already installed then nothing will be done for that package and the next one should start automatically." But then this means I won't be able to use this list to undo everything I will have installed, as this list will also uninstall packages that were already installed. Unless there's a way to tell the script to save the packages that were not installed, because they were already there ? Then I could use this new list to remove what I have installed. I hope what I said is understandable.

would do the trick.
Ok, no problem. It's great that you're putting in the time to try and understand, and most importantly, learn from it. That's how we all got started
When you are processing the list of packages (p2install.txt), apt-get will try to install every package one by one. If a package is already installed, the apt-get will tell you that and the script will move on to the next line.

The list p2install.pkg is only a list of the packages you got as a result from the difference between packages.txt (gotten from listing /usr/share/doc) and what you have currently installed (using the same command on /usr/share/doc).

As stated before, the p2install.pkg is by no means whatsoever a guaranteed complete list of what was installed on your previous system.

The originalselected.txt file on the other hand is generated from the package manager and NOT from a listing of the documentation directory. Hence it's more guaranteed to contain all of the packages installed, those that have documentation in /usr/share/doc and those that don't.

You cannot compare the two and rely on the result since they are different by nature. Every documentation listed is related to a package but every package installed doesn't necessarily have a documentation or have one in the one location you listed. It's like comparing two different types of apples, both are apples but they might differ in taste, shape, color, and so on. If you want to do a comparison at this level you'll have to make sure that you are comparing the result from an identical source, which in this case it is not.

I hope that makes it a bit clearer?

Kind regards,

Eric

It still says that playfile is not in sorted order. I think it's because of the spaces.
Would this remove the spaces ? :
sed -i 's/\t//g' playfile.txt
sed -i 's/ //g' playfile.txt

how to combine these 2 lines, and what does g mean ?
(I'm guessing -i is to use playfile.txt as the ouput ?)

I did this, and it worked, but the comm command still doesn't work. It says playfile is not in sorted order...

Not in sorted order means that it's not sorted. Most likely it's not completely alphabetically sorted. But again, like I mentioned in my earlier post, you cannot compare originalselected.txt to packages.txt or original.txt.

You can combine the sed expressions like this:
If you want to clean up the playlist file from all spaces and tabs and so, you can use the following:
That will look at the file like it is in columns using space as a delimiter and only print the first column (the package name) to the file newplaylist.txt. Then you can try to compare that to whatever file you want to compare it to.

Kind regards,

Eric

The -i means 'in place', that is use the same file for input and output. The g in the expression indicates to perform the requested task globally, that is, on every instance it encounters in the file.

Kind regards,

Eric