Debian: Reinstalling a Server Almost Identically

Principle

From a reference server, I want to quickly install another server with exactly the same packages.

Usage

We'll extract the list of installed packages from the reference server:

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dpkg --get-selections > my_packages.txt

Then reinstall everything from this package list:

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dpkg --clear-selections
dpkg --set-selections < my_packages.txt
apt-get update
apt-get dselect-upgrade
apt-get dist-upgrade
apt-get upgrade