Update Manager - export / import software sources to / from data file

[gjdemo]

I would like to see the option in the Update Manager that would allow me to import and export the PPA and Software sources to a data file so I can transfer this information to another machine. All my computers use Linux Mint and if I am doing a fresh install this would help immensely. Thank you.

Gary

[karlchen]

Hello, Gary.

All the software sources list files are pure text files. No need to export them as text files therefore.
You will find them in the folders /etc/apt and /etc/apt/sources.list.d

• In the folder /etc/apt there will be the file sources.list
  sources.list will usually only hold a comment line.
• All the relevant sources list files will be found in the folder /etc/apt/sources.list.d
  • The central sources list file on Mint is named official-package-repositories.list
  • All files having the extension .list will be sources list files
  • All files having the double extensions .list.save will be backup copies of sources list files.

You can view the content of each sources list file with your favourite editor like xed, gedit, leafpad or kate.

You can find out the name of each sources list file and the content of each sources list file very quickly by executing the command inxi -r in a terminal window.

One note on simply copying over the sources list files from one machine to the next machine:
While this is possible, it is only half of the truth, because each repository always requires a signing key as well, but copying over the sources list files will not bring along the signing keys. So you would end up with a lot of warnings that the software repositories could not be verified.

HTH,
Karl