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silvo
Asked: 2010-07-29 12:11:47 +0800 CST

Is there a way to reset all packages/sources and start from scratch?

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I have been playing with package management by adding sources from older Ubuntu releases in order to get older versions of some software (e.g. PHP). Unfortunately at some point I must have overdid it as now every attempt to use apt-get or synaptic ends in an error message being displayed saying that there is no candidate available to install.

I would like to start fresh - remove all the installed packages and added sources. Is there a quick way to do this, or do I need to reinstall the OS?

package-management uninstall

3 Answers

  1. You can do an installation of Ubuntu over top of an existing installation. You'll lose all of your (non-local [1]) system files and applications, but it will preserve everything in /home.

    Select the advanced partitioning option from the menu of either the desktop CD installer or the alternate CD installer. Set the mountpoint of your existing root partition to / and make sure the format box is not checked. Repeat these steps for your home partition, if you have one.

    1: Where local system directories would be /usr/src, /usr/local, and /var/local.

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  2. Best Answer

    You could always remove all packages (making a few exceptions for apt-get, etc.)

    Then run:

    sudo apt-get install ubuntu-desktop

    This installs the desktop metapackage which has pretty much every other package as a dependency.

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  3. Remove all but the current release of Ubuntu you're running from /etc/apt/sources.list. Then sudo apt-get update; sudo apt-get dist-upgrade. Let me know if you still have trouble.

    You may have to reinstall.

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