[vox-tech] Recovering Debian without /var/lib/dpkg...

[Peter Jay Salzman]

begin Karsten M. Self <kmself@ix.netcom.com> 
> on Tue, Jan 21, 2003 at 11:30:28AM -0800, R. Douglas Barbieri (doug@dooglio.net) wrote:
> > Here is a good article about recovering a Debian system without having a
> > backup of /var/lib/dpkg...
> > 
> > http://www.linuxworld.com/2003/0113.petreley.html
> 
> Funny, I walked someone through that on irc.debian.org:#debian last
> week.  This can be somewhat simplified from Nick's procedure.  Rather
> than manually re-selecting packages in dselect, you would take advantage
> of the fact that Debian policy requires all packages to create an entry
> in /usr/share/doc, with the name of the package.
> 
> Procedure (in handy shell-script format).  Note that I *haven't* tried
> this (suggestion:  someone with a faster box than I should try
> installing Debian under UML and self-inflicting damage, then recovering,
> and telling me what I got wrong).

if anyone with a little time is curious enough, i'll lend you a 60GB
hard drive to do the test, and if successful, demonstrate it as a short
demo at an upcoming lugod meeting.

pete