Backup and Restore of Manually Installed APT Packages

This documentation describes how to save and restore manually installed APT packages on a Debian-based system.
It uses the apt-mark showmanual command to generate a clean list of user-installed packages, which can be used to restore or clone systems.

Overview

A list of manually installed packages is created and stored at:

/etc/apt/packages.list

This file is overwritten each time the backup tool is executed.

1. https://docs.hetzner.com/de/robot/dedicated-server/operating-systems/hetzner-aptitude-mirror/
2. ai netselect-apt; netselect-apt
3. /etc/apt/sources.list
   1. apt edit-sources

1. cat /etc/apt/preferences; cat /etc/apt/preferences.d/*
2. apt-cache policy
3. ai apt-listchanges deborphan

for pkg in $(deborphan); do
   aptitude why "$pkg"
done

2. apt remove --purge $(deborphan)
3. apt list --installed
4. apt-mark showhold

#!/bin/bash
# =============================================================================
# Script Name: lxc_package_install.sh
# Version: 1.1
# Author: Andreas Fleckl
# Description: This script installs a specified package in all running LXC
#              containers.