How can I configure a reusable package download script for new distro setups?

For my future debian setups I'd like to use a common file containing lists of packages and commands to run after initial VPS creation ( I use linode ).

Could anyone advise what I could setup in order to accomplish this? I would want to throw in commands such as aptitude update and then aptitude install screen and dozens and dozens of packages to download.

From serverfault meder

• One way to deal with this would be to create a script (bash would be appropriate) that runs your various commands. In fact the script would be incredibly short if it read in the package names from another file.

  The only problem would be if package names changed and you didn't notice/update the name in your script or file.

  meder : Yes I'm considering a bash script, but should it be barebones or is there some sort of program someone created which makes the process somewhat easier, more reliable incase of errors/invalid package names, etc?

  chunkyb2002 : Well there is this.... http://fai-project.org/ save you reinventing the wheel but I don't know how it will handle errors/invalid packages

  chunkyb2002 : I've also used Cobbler (https://fedorahosted.org/cobbler/) before but only in a REHL/CentOS environment. It works really well though.
  From chunkyb2002