Debian question

[Bill Sconce]

On Sun, 13 Feb 2005 22:07:13 -0500
Bruce Dawson <jbd at codemeta.com> wrote:

> On Sun, 2005-02-13 at 15:31 -0500, Neil Joseph Schelly wrote:
> > On Sunday 13 February 2005 03:05 pm, Michael ODonnell wrote:
> > That idea doesn't work for me anyway, but I'd look at the
> > diff between /var/lib/dpkg/status and /var/lib/dpkg/status-old.
> > Those represent the status of all packages available and the 
> > difference between them should be the difference in package
> > lists from now and before your last apt-get whatever...
> 
> Unfortunately, I done some package adds and deletes since then,
> so the diff only finds the later differences.
> 
> This is one of the features that RPM had that I really miss
> (install data of package), and can't seem to find in any Debian 
> package manager (dpkg, dselect, synaptic, ...)
> 
> --Bruce


I too would like to hear that there's a specified way to get
installation history information.  Like you,I've looked for it -
in HOWTOs, by Googling, by exploring synaptic's displays and
menus.  Let's hope someone helps out with a "real" technique...

In the meantime, I've found it helpful to look for subdirectories
in /usr/share/doc, e.g.,

    ls -lt /usr/share/doc | head

An apt-get/dpkg installation often creates a subdirectory in
/usr/share/doc.  (Often? Almost always? Always?  I don't know.) 
But a subdirectory and its creation date does suggest that a
certain package has been installed, and when.  It may not show
the converse, but at least it's a starting point.

-Bill


Example:  this "looks right" - I know I installed catdoc, xlhtml,
and sg3-utils recently:

    laura$ ls -lt /usr/share/doc | head
    total 1025
    drwxr-xr-x    2 root     root          216 Feb 12 22:16 catdoc
    drwxr-xr-x    3 root     root          280 Feb 12 22:09 xlhtml
    drwxr-xr-x    3 root     root          240 Feb 12 21:41 sg3-utils
      [...]