All installed programs linux

Linux Get List of Installed Software for Reinstallation / Restore All the Software Programs

H ardware and software failures are part of life. And that is why you need to have a backup plan. I have already written about backing up files and MySQL databases. There is no need to backup all installed binaries and software programs. The following tip will not just save your time, but both Debian/Ubuntu and CentOS/Fedora/RHEL based distro can be updated and restored when required.

In order to reinstall or restore your installed software you need to have a list of all installed software. The package manager in Linux can be used to save installed/removed packages on a source system and duplicate those changes on other systems. This post will help you through do the same.

HowTo: Create a Backup list of all installed software on a Debian / Ubuntu Linux

If you are using a Debian or Ubuntu Linux, use the dpkg command to list installed software:
$ dpkg —get-selections
You can store list of installed software to a file called /backup/installed-software.log, enter:
$ dpkg —get-selections > /backup/installed-software.log

HowTo: Create a Backup list of all installed software on a RHEL/Fedora/Suse/CentOS Linux

RPM based distributions (RHEL, Fedora, Redhat, CentOS, Suse Linux) user try the rpm command to get list of all installed software, enter:
$ rpm -qa
OR
$ rpm -qa > /backup/installed-software.log
OR remove software version number (recommended):
rpm -qa —qf «%\n» | sort > /backup/installed-software.log

How do I restore installed software from a backup List?

Under a Debian/Ubuntu Linux type the following two commands to reinstall all the programs:
# dpkg —set-selections
Once list is imported, use the dselect command or other tools to install the packages, enter:
# dselect
Select ‘ i ‘ for install the software. OR use the following command:
# apt-get dselect-upgrade

Restoring packages on rpm based distro

As far as I know RPM based distro does not offers dpkg kind of facility. But, with a little shell scripting technique you can easily install all software programs:
# LIST=»$ cat /backup/installed-software.log )»
If you are using the yum command, type the following bash for loop to install all software:
# for s in $LIST; do yum -y install $s; done

Or try out the following command (HT to gt):
# yum -y install $(cat /backup/installed-software.log)

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A Note About RHEL version 4

If you are using RHEL/CentOS v4.x or older, enter:
# for s in $LIST; do up2date -i $s; done

Alternatively, you can use the following up2date command:
# up2date -i $(cat /backup/installed-software.log)

Category	List of Unix and Linux commands
Documentation	help • mandb • man • pinfo
Disk space analyzers	df • duf • ncdu • pydf
File Management	cat • cp • less • mkdir • more • tree
Firewall	Alpine Awall • CentOS 8 • OpenSUSE • RHEL 8 • Ubuntu 16.04 • Ubuntu 18.04 • Ubuntu 20.04
Linux Desktop Apps	Skype • Spotify • VLC 3
Modern utilities	bat • exa
Network Utilities	NetHogs • dig • host • ip • nmap
OpenVPN	CentOS 7 • CentOS 8 • Debian 10 • Debian 8/9 • Ubuntu 18.04 • Ubuntu 20.04
Package Manager	apk • apt
Processes Management	bg • chroot • cron • disown • fg • glances • gtop • jobs • killall • kill • pidof • pstree • pwdx • time • vtop
Searching	ag • grep • whereis • which
Shell builtins	compgen • echo • printf
Text processing	cut • rev
User Information	groups • id • lastcomm • last • lid/libuser-lid • logname • members • users • whoami • who • w
WireGuard VPN	Alpine • CentOS 8 • Debian 10 • Firewall • Ubuntu 20.04

Comments on this entry are closed.

better run yum only once:

rpm -qa > /backup/installed-software.log
for i in $(cat /backup/installed-software.log) ; do packages+=»$i » ; done
yum install $packages

Appreciate your post/script

xargs yum install

And if you use Gentoo Linux it would be as follows:

# cat /var/lib/portage/world
to get the list of packages

#emerge -av $(cat /path/to/backupworldfile.txt)

rpm -qa > /backup/installed-software.log

yum install `cat /backup/installed-software.log | tr «n» » «`

or barely:
yum install $(cat /backup/installed-software.log)
so simple!

Dam … I should have used this one liner 🙂

nuclearjoker, not to troll out of u

But whole point of this article is about binary software install/update, IMPO. What you pointing is source compile under gentoo linux

Please correct me if I am wrong.

@patrick
Well, Gentoo does compile all packages from sources, yes, but it uses a package management system. And the packages that are installed, are of course, binaries. Just because they were compiled on the system, doesn’t make them any less so. So it is applicable to this.

Good article. Thanks.

For me this approach is the same that install from DVD/CDROM with the regular installer. Where are the own files? configuration files, customizated setups, and so on.

Jarl,
As I said earlier, I am assuming that you are having a backup of /etc config file and other important data to tape or FTP or NAS server. Please read following url. This article is actually follow-up to earlier article.
Once application installed you can simply restore both data and configuration file.

Also, consider the CD/DVD media is not up-to-date or does not carries patched version. This method offers out of box protection as both up2date, yum or apt-get installs patched/up-to-date version.

You can also use “apt-get dselect-upgrade” instead of dselect.

Instead of dselect, can aptitude be used instead? What are the parameters involved?

Short answer YES

Long answer – Both dselect and aptitude act as a Debian package management frontend.

Even easier – Fedora users should get their installed packages list automagically updated every day to ‘/var/log/rpmpkgs’ – so, assuming you’ve taken a backup and restored the file the following should suffice:

yum -y install $(cat /var/log/rpmpkgs)

How would you do this on Ubuntu using apt-get instead of dpkg?

Just to note. apt-get isn’t Ubuntu only. It’s another frontend to dpkg. On Ubuntu just use dpkg as you would on a Debian system.

apt-get command does not support this kind of facility. You need to use dpkg command only.

When you install with CentOS it puts the list of installed rpms in /root/install.log. If root’s home dir is backed up you’re in business. Although I doubt if it’s update after the install.

Couldn’t you just create a kickstart disk after install/config and pop it in to reinstall then do a yum update? That would get you closer than just reainstalling packages. Of course all of this is fun to talk about but realistically you’d have backups and you’d just restore… I backup MBRs and files. Throw a live cd in the machine to be restored and from the backup server – dd if=/backup/MBR.bin | ssh “cat | dd of=/dev/hda”

It’s late and this is from memory but I think that’ll work to restore the MBR across the network. Then format and restore from backup.

For Debian systems, you can also grab the debconf database and use it to preseed the installation questions that occur, including how to partition your hard drive. This allows you to completely automate the installation process. Check out the debian-installer Install manual at http://d-i.alioth.debian.org/manual/en.i386/apb.html.

There is a huge disadvantage using package lists – it lists a lot packages that one have not chosen to install but are installed because they are dependencies. This makes it veeery tedious to restore if the list is somewhat old or using another distro since dependencies change a lot.

For debian-based system: Install “debfoster” and run it. After answering a lot of questions about your packages you will have a system without unnecessary packages and a short list of only the packages that you have actively chosen to install.

hi im new to this comp. stuff but i just got 1 question. i installed a game as imess around my laptop i uninstalled the game that i just installed. how can i recover that lost game cause i do not have the disc anymore please help me.

That’s why I LOVE LINUX!

nice tut man I LOVE LINUX too much

Just what I needed 🙂
Linux is great.

Im new to linex i was viewing utorrent in VNC i closed it by mistake how do i run it again so i can view the current activities

suppose i have 3 software A B and C
now i have taken backup..in log file..
now,, I have installed D and E , and removed B
— If Now i will restore then i will be having A B C D E , but is now a full restore.
ideally,, you need to create a new backuplist of software which has A C D and E
and then find the diff so that you can get D and E are extra software to remove first and B is need to installed. also,, you need to check that software are available or not, but nice article . can be integrated in Yumex

for debian/ubuntu method. will it reinstall all the 1313 packages that i noted as being saved to the backup log or will it skip the packages that need not be updated?

For Slackware-based distros:

Nice to see Debian and RPM based distro’s working so peacefully together in this
gr8 tutorial. I gonna give it a try to put this as an aftercare script in a kickstart file.
I want to call it a ‘clone kickstart’. 😉

ks.cfg extracted/edited from a fedora distro /root/anaconda-ks.cfg

%post
for i in $(cat /some_network/kickstart_server/installed-software.log) ; do
packages+=”$i ” ; done
yum install -y $packages
%end

Just an idea so correct me if i am wrong. That saves time. 😉

i can’t automate the installation process in fedora since it is asking
“Total Download size:xxMB
Is this ok [y/n]?”
every time for all packages i have to give ‘y’ to download the package …………

is there any other way to automate the process?

But….
rpm -qa
Returns the long name, with version number, distro and arch,
for ex. gnome-utils-libs-2.28.3-1.fc11.i586
And if you try to install this list on a newer version distro you get
No gnome-utils-libs-2.28.3-1.fc11.i586 package availabe.

The problem is that I’ve just figure out this, just when I’ve formatted and installed a newer version of Fedora. Is there a trick to use the list I have? because there is no pattern at all to use sed/awk, isn’t it?

This guy IS the guy! Thanks men!

The article should be updated with this argument.

This is what I did. It ensures that if the list is long enough to exceed the length limit on a command, it will still work:

cat installed-software.log | xargs yum -y install

Can be done to allow for upgrading to newer systems be removing arch dependency:

Then use this to install on other system:

How do you view partial list? I get the lists but I can’t view anything on top.

Helo,
I need a debian command to find which packages I have installed from backports. dkpg –get-selections only gives me the package name.

Works GREAT . Thanks for a great site with really great stuff for Nix Admins.

If anyone gets a permission denied error when running the dpkg –get-selections > /etc/installed-applications.log command

First create your .log file in your chosen folder, give yourself or root full permission to write to the file then run it again.

What I then did was I added this command to the FTPbackup.sh script also posted on this site so now it does this automatically everyday making sure I have a complete up to date list of applications installed.

Hello,
Looking for information on how to restore out of rpm/yum upgrade/install (off all installs done on 09/22/2011)

Yum’s package management is really abysmal:

After searching for intensely on the web for ways to retrieve a list of packages that had been manually installed in CentOS 5 (so I can clean up no longer needed apps), I finally had to give up: It’s just not possible – the only thing you can get is useless lists which include gazillion dependencies as if they were programs you had actually ‘installed’.

In RHEL/CentOS/SL 6.x, the situation has gotten slightly better with yumdb.

But IMHO you can ONLY _manually_ generate a list if you do
yumdb search installed_by 0 (lists everything installed by user root, not including things from the initial installation)

and then remove (by hand) everything that isn’t also in the following list
– yumdb search reason user (everything that wasn’t installed as part of a dependency. This however also includes everything from the initial installation)

If you then manually generated a list from those 2 outputs, you should get a list of individual apps that have been installed. To get yum to also remove non-needed dependencies you of course also have to add clean_requirements_on_remove=1 to /etc/yum.conf.

Alternative:
If you run an OS with good package management, such as Gentoo things are so much simpler: edit /var/lib/portage/world and remove what you no longer need, then run emerge –depclean and you’re done.

You can also do:
#cat installed.log |xargs yum -y install

I used the following command to clean up the list of packages generated in fedora:

sed -r –in-place ‘s/-9[a-z 0-9_.-]*//’ installed-software.log

This removes any version dist and architecture information leaving only the packagename suitable for yum to consume using the command as suggested by rainmaker:

cat installed.log |xargs yum -y install

correcting the command above

correcting the command above

sed -r –in-place ‘s/-8[a-z 0-9_.-]*//’ installed-software.log

if mount -o remount,exec /tmp && pear channel-update pear.php.net && pear upgrade –force Console_Getopt && pear upgrade –force pear && pear upgrade-all && pecl install json; then
echo “extension=json.so” > /etc/php.d/json.ini
mount -o remount,noexec /tmp
else
mount -o remount,noexec /tmp
error_exit “JSON was unable to be installed”
fi

Is there any way to get the software manufacturer name with dpkg/rpm command for those softwares.

I run the 1st command and get the list but on the second command
i get this this error
“cmcanulty@Darcy25:

$ dpkg –get-selections > /backup/installed-software.log
bash: /backup/installed-software.log: No such file or directory”
but I did make a bckup folder in my home and created a test file called
installed-software.log before I ran the 2nd command what am I doing wrong?

Kindly delete the “installed-software.log” that you made (I think).

Home’s directory is actually /home//

Maybe try doing this command instead:
dpkg –get-selections >

Hey all, little trouble here, hopefully I didn’t just jack up like I think I might have…
I created the .log file and saved it, all my docs/files and a febe file for firefox to flash before install of precise pangolin beta, I tell it to:
# dpkg –set-selections tw Mar 4, 2012 @ 19:45

I am thinking I should still be using dpkg but with the refuse downgrade command in conjunction with the set selections command to reinstall all my packages from before, but apparantly I’m not getting that right…

hi
i have remove vnc RPM`s from my Linux Server & again install it but its not working,when i try to open
#vino-preferences its not working
can someome please tell why this heppning

Small suggestion on your rpm backup strategy –

Includes package version numbers, which are subject to change.

You can strip them with a “simple” modification

Restore is the same (careful with the -y):

Please help
When I try to update
Or the installation of any tool
Always having a this message
root@bt:

# apt-get install software-center
Reading package lists… Done
Building dependency tree
Reading state information… Done
E: Couldn’t find package software-center
I’ve tried a lot of solutions to no avail

There is another line that should be run before restoring the list to dselect:
sudo dselect update

Without this line, about 1000 entries to the list throw an error – not in database.
After running the dselect update, then bringing the list into dselect, there are only 2 files which are not reloaded. They are not in the Synaptic List and are downloaded from providers. Google Chrome being one of them.

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