[sclug] cloning a debian installation

[John Stumbles]

I've got a new bigger hdd for my desktop and, rather than copying 
everything across with tar or dd, I'd like to do a fresh install but 
include all (or most) of my currently installed packages.

It looks as if dpkg-query -l will give me a list of currently installed 
packages, and I suppose I could throw these all at apt-get but I can see 
soem problems with this such as the package names in dpkg-query being 
truncated and installation resulting in a lot of hiatuses (hiati?) as 
various packages stop and prompt for various configuration parameters. 
Surely there's some neat way to do this?

Also, I assume I can save download time if I put all my 
/var/cache/apt/archives files on a dvd or something local that the new 
install can read rather than get from the network. Is there a particular 
format to save the files in to make them available to the installation 
process?

tia
-- 
John Stumbles