Victor Sudakov wrote: > Dear Colleagues, > > A production system, especially a desktop system, tends to accumulate > unnecessary packages. Users install software for testing, then forget > about it, or it falls into disuse... > > In FreeBSD, you can always run "pkg delete -a" and return to the > post-install state (well, almost). This command will remove all the > third-party packages added to the base system after installation > (modified files under /usr/local/ will remain). > > What's the procedure for Debian?
i don't think there is any one procedure as there are so many different requirements that people can have and the size of the installation may be quite different. when someone specifies a production system to me that means they are likely running stable and not testing or unstable. you can find some information about what packages and versions in /var/log/install and /var/log/apt if you've kept those files. if as time has been long enough there may be updates from the initial installed versions so i don't think you can always count on downgrading to work for those. if you desire a specific image of a system to always be able to boot and work then there would have to be some other way to do that IMO. i have not yet used timeshift as my backup and recovery needs are not that great (instead i keep other bootable versions available including one on a USB stick). there are other partition copying utilties and schemes that can be used, but i've not had to mess with them recently enough. a long time ago i was using partclone which did what i needed it to do. songbird
