[CALUG] Repairing Ubuntu 8.04 installation, or installing packages to an alternate destination?

[sklist at kitterman.com]

On Sat, 25 Apr 2009 10:05:15 -0700 (PDT) Ed Browne 
<edward_d_browne at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Hi,
>    I inadvertently, tragically, uninstalled a bunch of packages on
>my Ubuntu 8.04, including some things necessary for both
>synaptic and a network connection.
>    So, short of doing a brand-new install, is there a way to
>salvage this system?  I'm booted up now on the Ubuntu 8.04
>install DVD, so can I either
>a) install the packages I need from the DVD to my hard drive,
>perhaps targeting a different relative path where I would have
>mounted my hard drive, like say "/mnt/usr" and so forth.
>or
>b) manually install the bare minimum of tools manually
>on hard drive, and put the rest packages I need on the hard
>drive, then boot up in the hard drive and install those
>pre-positioned packages with some form of simple
>command-line package management?
>
Mount the system's hard drive (I use Kubuntu, not Ubuntu, so I can't advise 
you on which GUI tool to do this with), make a new directory and copy the 
.deb files for the packages you need (including their dependencies you may 
have removed) from the dvd into this directory on your system's hard drive 
(anywhere is fine, but in your user home dir somewhere is safest), reboot 
into your system, open a shell and cd into the dir with the .deb's, then 
install the packages using:

sudo dpkg -i *.deb

if there are dependency errors, make note of them and try to fix it with:

sudo apt-get -f install

Pay close attention to what apt wants to do.  If it doesn't want to remove 
packages, then go ahead, if it does, you didn't get all the packages you 
need.  You'll need to reboot into the dvd and repeat to get the missing 
packages.

That should allow you to reinstall the missing bits.

Scott K