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Asked: 2013-01-24 11:41:53 +0800 CST

Returning Packages To Default

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Is there a way to make my system go back to how it was when first installed ubuntu without doing the standard installation again? I want my packages, repositories, configuration files to go back to how it was when ubuntu 12.04 LTS was first installed.

Is that possible?

package-management

1 Answers

  1. Edit:

    Sadly dpkg or apt dosn't keep a log of what packages were installed / removed and when, as far as I know. The best shot here is to look through your .bash_history and try to find what you modifyed. (You do know that dpkg -l will show you all packages that are installed configured etc. right?)

    To properly purge a package use:

    apt-get remove --purge <package>

    To reconfigure ALL packages on your system use the following command (as root):

    dpkg -l | cut -d " " -f3 | xargs dpkg-reconfigure

    Be aware that this will possibly take some time.

    These tools are capable of getting a lot of configuration "reseted" but they are incapable of magic. If you messed up your system really bad then the best solution sometimes is to back-up everything and reinstall.

    You can use dpkg-reconfigure <package-name> to "reset" most packages to their defaults; but no-one knows what you installed with your systems main install except you.

    You could search for which packages a "default" installation puts on your machine and remove everything else, but then again we can't know what you installed with your system's base install.

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