Revert to fresh Debian install

peturkarl · 01-30-2012, 11:48 AM

Quick and easy question, how would you guys recommend I do this, purge&remove "all" packages?

Just need SSH access.

pljvaldez · 01-30-2012, 01:54 PM

If you can get your hands on the machine, it's probably best to just reinstall with a netinstall CD, then in tasksel unselect all groups except "base system".

You could try dpkg --get-selections > packages.txt and then change everything you want to remove from "installed" to "purge". Then do a dpkg --set-selections < packages.txt.

Or you could try install tasksel from the repos and uncheck all the boxes.

Or if you don't care about the hard disk space, you could simply modify the init scripts so that nothing starts up at boot.

peturkarl · 01-31-2012, 04:58 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pljvaldez

If you can get your hands on the machine, it's probably best to just reinstall with a netinstall CD, then in tasksel unselect all groups except "base system".

You could try dpkg --get-selections > packages.txt and then change everything you want to remove from "installed" to "purge". Then do a dpkg --set-selections < packages.txt.

Or you could try install tasksel from the repos and uncheck all the boxes.

Or if you don't care about the hard disk space, you could simply modify the init scripts so that nothing starts up at boot.

thanks for your reply, im afraid physical tampering is out of the question. It's a VPS, im leaning towards just removing all the necessary packages manually.

zhjim · 01-31-2012, 05:04 AM

For a manual removale maybe this comes handy.

Code:

dpkg -l > /tmp/all_your_installed_packages
for i in $(cat /tmp/all_your_installed_packages; do
         some_command_to_remove_the_version
         apt-get purge $i
done

Edited cause its dpkg and not dpg

peturkarl · 01-31-2012, 04:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by zhjim

For a manual removale maybe this comes handy.

Code:

dpg -l > /tmp/all_your_installed_packages
for i in $(cat /tmp/all_your_installed_packages; do
         some_command_to_remove_the_version
         apt-get purge $i
done

Thanks will probably do something like that.