This simple test probes dselect is currently broken on Ubuntu amd64 12.04/10.04 (as root): $ echo "apache2 install" | dpkg --set-selections $ dselect install Reading package lists... Done Building dependency tree Reading state information... Done The following NEW packages will be installed: gcc-4.6-base:i386 libasn1-8-heimdal:i386 libc6:i386 libcap2:i386 libcomerr2:i386 libdb5.1:i386 libexpat1:i386 libgcc1:i386 libgcrypt11:i386 libgnutls26:i386 libgpg-error0:i386 libgssapi3-heimdal:i386 libhcrypto4-heimdal:i386 libheimbase1-heimdal:i386 libheimntlm0-heimdal:i386 libhx509-5-heimdal:i386 libkrb5-26-heimdal:i386 libldap-2.4-2:i386 libp11-kit0:i386 libpcre3:i386 libroken18-heimdal:i386 libsasl2-2:i386 libsasl2-modules:i386 libsqlite3-0:i386 libssl1.0.0:i386 libtasn1-3:i386 libuuid1:i386 libwind0-heimdal:i386 zlib1g:i386 0 upgraded, 29 newly installed, 0 to remove and 0 not upgraded. Need to get 8,500 kB of archives. After this operation, 22.2 MB of additional disk space will be used. Do you want to continue [Y/n]? So I propose the removal of dselect usage from the docs and use of simple apt-get commands (perhaps providing a convenient script). Regards To+