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rjmunro
Asked: 2013-10-12 06:50:10 +0800 CST

Using `dpkg --set-selections` to copy package config to a new server

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I'm trying to create a test server with all the same packages on as the live server, following the instructions here (and similar instructions elsewhere)

But when I run the apt-get -u dselect-upgrade command I'm getting:

Reading package lists... Done
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... Done
The following packages have unmet dependencies:
 cron : Depends: adduser but it is not going to be installed
 upstart : Depends: initscripts
           Depends: mountall
           Depends: ifupdown (>= 0.6.10ubuntu5)
E: Error, pkgProblemResolver::Resolve generated breaks, this may be caused by held packages.
E: Internal error, problem resolver broke stuff

Both servers are in the Rackspace cloud, but under different accounts, so I can't use Rackspace's clone features.

server

1 Answers

  1. I managed to mostly work around the problem by holding all the packages that were already installed on the system.

    I used the following recipe:

    dpkg --get-selections | grep "\binstall$" | sed s/install/hold/ > toHold.txt
dpkg --set-selections < selections.txt
dpkg --set-selections < toHold.txt
apt-get dselect-upgrade

    At this point, only one package, libxml2-dev:i386 was still causing issues, so I manually removed it with:

    echo libxml2-dev:i386 hold | dpkg --set-selections
apt-get install -f
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