Help with dpkg set selections

[JayPeters]

I was having problems with the upgrade from 9.10 to 10.4--mainly that Ubuntu would not shut down properly. The only way I could shutdown was to press the power button.

I thought I'd try a clean install and use dpkg to get the list of installed apps on my system before attempting the clean installation of 10.4.

I used
sudo dpkg --get--selections > installed_apps to backup the list of installed applications. I saved the list and emailed it to myself.

The clean install went fine, and my system now shuts down properly; however, I can't update my installed application list with the dpkg command.

When I run


sudo dpkg --set-selections < installed_appsI get the following error message:


dpkg: unexpected data after package and selection at line 1Can anyone help me to load my list of applications from my previous installation?

Thank you.

[smitty825]

I'm not an expert in this, however, I think you need to clear the selections before you set them:


sudo dpkg --clear-selections
sudo dpkg --set-selections < packages

(Though, I'm assuming you didn't accidentally make the same mistake on your computer that you made on the first line (--get--selections instead of --get-selections)

Good luck!