[aklug] doing a apt-get reinstall everything on debian?

Hi all,

the root drive (ext2 on a usb thumbdrive) got corrupted on a small
debian box I'm running. The box is nothing critical and an fsck took
care of the fs level damage. The machine boots now, but there's
apparently lots of little lib files and other stuff that got messed up
when the thumbdrive barfed.

Now, I can certainly restore from backup (yes, I have one), but I was
wondering if debian can do something like

# apt-get install --reinstall <everything>

Googling doesn't bring up anything obvious so if not then off the top
of my head, I can bash something like (concept code, not real code)

# dpkg -l | awk | apt-get install --reinstall {}

but if apt already has that option somewhere that I just can't find,
why reinvent the wheel?

My other question is whether doing a reinstall everything like this
may actually be a bad idea. And if it is a bad idea, why ?

Thoughts?
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Received on Thu Jan 19 10:55:47 2012