How can I run a command for a list of packages?

Question

I tried to install Gnome 3 on Debian Testing following this explanation. However, this didn't work and left me without any graphical user interface.

At the moment I try to fix that and I realised there is a long list of packages marked as manually installed. I stored a (line-break separated) list of the packages that – in my opinion – should be marked as auto installed (nearly all of them).

Now I want to run apt-mark auto for this list.

How do I do that?

P.S.: I also would appreciate if somebody tells me that this is not a good idea (if it isn't).

score 7 · Accepted Answer · edited May 01 '17 at 22:56

You can use xargs:

 cat /path/to/file | xargs apt-mark auto

This should work if there is one package name per line in the text file /path/to/file.

Another option would be to use a for loop:

 for pkg in `cat /path/to/file`; do apt-mark auto $pkg; done

The second way might be useful if you have a similar problem where the command can't be called with a list of parameters but you have to call it once for each parameter you have. But in your case it's not that elegant of course… :)

Btw I assume that you are using bash.

Note: On my system apt-mark --help says:

Usage: apt-mark [options] {markauto|unmarkauto} packages...

And also:

apt-mark is deprecated, use apt-get markauto/unmarkauto.

With `xargs`, you can just write ` – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Jul 12 '11 at 21:06 — Gilles 'SO- stop being evil', Jul 12 '11 at 21:06

score 3 · Answer 2 · edited May 01 '17 at 22:56

3

It sounds like you want to dump your list of files into apt-mark auto one at a time. This pseudo-code should get you started:

while read pkgname; do apt-mark auto $pkgname; done <list_of_packages

edited May 01 '17 at 22:56

phk

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answered Jul 12 '11 at 16:59

pboin

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Why you calling this pseudo-code? It does work. – tshepang Jul 12 '11 at 17:27
True, it does. There's just no sanity checking, error reporting, etc... – pboin Jul 12 '11 at 17:52

score 1 · Answer 3 · edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

1

Run the following script with python scriptname.py list-of-packages.txt as root:

import subprocess
import sys

filename = sys.argv[1]
with open(filename) as f:
    packages = f.read()
    packages = packages.split()
    packages = " ".join(packages)
    cmd = "apt-mark auto " + packages
    subprocess.call(cmd, shell=True)

I expect that this wouldn't be a problem since having GNOME implies that you already have Python installed.

edited Apr 13 '17 at 12:36

Community

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answered Jul 12 '11 at 16:44

tshepang

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You've just reinvented xargs, minus its quoting issues but they're not a problem here. – Gilles 'SO- stop being evil' Jul 12 '11 at 21:07
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I was sure there was a better way of doing things. It just so happens I was the first to answer so I thought something sub-optimal is better than nothing :) – tshepang Jul 12 '11 at 22:00

How can I run a command for a list of packages?

3 Answers3