How to get the history of “apt-get install” on Ubuntu

aptdpkg

I am about do move a server from one Ubuntu box to another. I'm not cloning the old box to the new; I'm creating a new system and will move data as needed. I want to install all the software that I have on the old box on the new one.

Is there a simple way to find the history of all the "sudo apt-get install" commands I have given over time? That is, dpkg -l shows me all the packages that have been installed, but not which top-level package installed them. If there is a way for dpkg to give me the installing package, I can find the unique ones there; otherwise, I want something else to say "you installed these 24 packages".

Best Answer

The apt history is in /var/log/apt/history.log as said in a comment above. That said, this will not list packages that were installed manually, using dpkg or GUIs such as gdebi. To see all the packages that went through dpkg, you can look at /var/log/dpkg.log.

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Linux – ny way to get APT to install packages to the home directory

Dpkg do not have the --relocate feature that RPM has. It's worth considering how many RPM packages support that feature though. Basically, it can't be done.

What you could do is use a chroot if you want to test something before installing it globally on the system. To do this, you need to be able to get access to root. The first thing to do is to create a basic chroot:

# debootstrap lenny lenny-chroot

This creates a Lenny chroot inside the lenny-chroot directory.

Now we can enter the chroot:

# chroot lenny-chroot

Now we can do what ever we want and install anything without it messing up the rest of the system. When we're done, just type exit or press ctrl-D

Ubuntu – How to remove the “installed manually” flag and revert to “automatically installed” with apt-get

Aptitude can help you when you initially install the package:

aptitude install "zlib1g-dev&M"

Or, after your have installed the package:

aptitude markauto "zlib1g"

Edit: If you do not have aptitude, you can use

apt-mark auto zlib1g-dev

Best Answer

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