DANGER!!Worthless Piece of S**t installation routine tasksel

@nyqmrsof:

Ubuntu Server Edition comes with an easy to set up mail server. To install it, just select it at the end of the server install process or launch the tasksel command on an already installed server.

The link is: http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisub … mailserver">http://www.ubuntu.com/products/whatisubuntu/serveredition/features/mailserver

James

Whoa now… Even assuming Ubuntu has for some reason removed a number of packages that you need, it's hard to figure that it would destroy any of your work, besides possibly the package selection itself.

Your configuration of a package is not removed when the package is. You should just need to apt-get (or whatever) them again, and be fine.

@nyqmrsof:

I can't even get back into the server to fix it!!

Ever heard of LISH, the Linode Shell?

I had to reinstall mysql5, apache2, wordpress and php5 after clicking on the tasksel option to install "email server" . The process began and I watched in horror as configured and functioning installation files were removed. Afterward I couldn't ftp into the server or even ssh. I had to reinstall both of those using the linode ajax shell, just to see what remained. Thankfully my data wasn't lost, but hours later I am still having configuration setup problems getting wordpress with php5 to work in apache2 alongside mod_python, all of which were working just fine earlier today. It really does suck that tasksel gave me no warning or option to cancel out. No doubt the hard core ubuntu gurus know what a firebomb it is, and not to use it after you've set up your server already, but I just stupidly trusted the blithe description on the ubuntu mail server page. I'm posting this so maybe someone else won't have to suffer the same fate.

Apparently, some people on the Ubuntu forums encountered this as well: http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=748107

Also, I've found several bug reports about it. Unfortunately, none of the Ubuntu dev's replied to these bugs.

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour … bug/150252">https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/tasksel/+bug/150252

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour … bug/250287">https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/tasksel/+bug/250287

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour … bug/131202">https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/tasksel/+bug/131202

https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+sour … bug/141602">https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/tasksel/+bug/141602

In Ubuntu (and maybe Debian as well), a few things get automatically backed up.

Among them, aptitude package states and the dpkg status.

I seem to remember a shell/grep script somewhere that went through that to install all previously installed packages.

If you can't find it, you can always try a hack like:

• back up /var/lib/dpkg/status and status.old

• copy /var/backup/dpkg.status.0 to /var/lib/dpkg/status

(or whichever old dpkg.status has a good list of packages)

• dpkg –get-selections > /tmp/selections

• re-instate /var/lib/dpkg/status and status.old backups

• dpkg --set-seletions < /tmp/selections

Good luck, and I'd agree, stay away from dselect. It's an old piece of debian history.

I believe that tasksel automatically removes any programs that have been marked as "automatically installed" and which are not dependencies of any programs that have been "manually installed".

To mark a package as manually installed:

aptitude unmarkauto [packages]