What can I do with the information I get from dpkg -C?

eltopo

2/16/24, 2:37 PM

I'm trying to fix a Ubuntu 20.04 installation where I have a number of packages that need to be reinstalled. I found this out (as one would) by doing dpkg --audit (or dpkg -C), which returned a list of packages that have to be reinstalled.

This returned a pretty long list of packages for some reason. One of the actions I can take is to do apt install --reinstall [package-name] but there are at least a couple hundred packages, so that would be tiresome and boring.

Is there a way to automate this process? Ideally I'm thinking about a way for dpkg -C to produce an array of package names that could be fed to apt, but I don't know if this is possible.

Is there any way to use the audit result or would I have to come up with a mechanism myself?

1 + 1

package-management

apt

dpkg

Rinzwind

2/16/24, 3:02 PM

If you want to make a list you probably will need to order the packages so that will be daunting. Most of the packages listed will be dependencies so why not re-install the desktop (`sudp apt reinstall ubuntu-desktop` if that is your desktop)? That will pull also all of the required packages related to your desktop.

Score:1

Ubuntu

popey

2/16/24, 3:06 PM

Here's a one-liner that will (almost) do what you want.

for p in $(dpkg --audit | tail +4 | awk -F " " "{print $1}"); do echo sudo apt install $p --reinstall -y ; done

I say "almost" because it will print a bunch of lines like this:

sudo apt install zstd --reinstall -y
sudo apt install zsync --reinstall -y

Which you can either sort then do in whatever order you want. Or you could just remove the word "echo" in the one-liner and let it just fly through.

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