Okay, Debian gurus... a challenge.

[Ken D'Ambrosio]

Cole Tuininga wrote:

> If your currently installed packages list is valid, what about just
>
>something like:
>
>dpkg --get-selections | cut -f1 | xargs apt-get install --reinstall
>
>I've never tried it, but would something like this work?
>
>  
>
Well, I modified it a little -- my package list was valid, so your idea 
gave me the inspiration for the following:

dpkg -S /usr/lib > /tmp/stuff
for i in `cat /tmp/stuff`
do
apt-get install --reinstall --yes $i
done

1) Yeah, --yes is dangerous, but there is relatively little 
configuration done on this system, and I've got all my config files 
elsewhere.
2) I didn't just pipe the output of "dpkg" to "apt-get" because I was 
worried the two might conflict with each other while accessing the apt 
package list.

Gnome seems to have died a horrible death, and some other stuff is off, 
but it looks to have done the trick.  Thanks, all, for your suggestions!

-Ken