why does this command not work?

[Ken Moffat]

C M Reinehr wrote:
>
>
> Matt,
>
> David clearly is the Debian expert on this list and he prefers dselect. For my 
> part, I use aptitude for the most part and when I last did this (just last 
> week) I first ran dpkg --set-selections. Then, started up aptitude and 
> entered 'g' for go. I was presented with a list of all of the packages & 
> dependencies which had been marked for installation. Entering a second 'g' 
> for go started the installation. Can't get much easier than that.
>
> Cheers!
>
> cmr
>   

I have been thinking of reinstalling etch to a different partition. To 
do this procedure, would I just create a text file on the old partition 
using dpkg --get-selections, then use the basic netinstall of etch, put 
the text file on the new partition and run dpkg --set-selections, 
followed by aptitude or dselect? This would bring the new install up to 
the state of the old install? Or am I missing something important in 
this process. It seems almost too simple.

ken