On 8/31/06, Morgan Read <mstuff@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
Of course fedora is somewhat more sophisticated than MacOS 8.1, but the principle's the same. Basically, what I have to do at least every 6mths is: - List my packages
easily done.. and in fact a nightly list of packages is generated by a cronscript /var/log/rpmpkgs by the associated cronjob.
- List all changes to /home/me/
changes in /home/ could not be tracked since pretty much everything down in /home/ is non-default and its not even regarded as system information. You would need to backup all of /home/, no need to try to track changes inside /home when all of /home is considered a customization.
- List all changes to /etc/
Isn't this accomplished by parsing all of rpm -V and looking for files in /etc/ ?
- back up /home/me/ and /etc/
backup to where and how? backing up a user's space while outside of an enterprise network is still a huge problem with no reasonably accessible in-distro solution. Go back into the fedora archives and read up on previous discussions concerning the pybackpack Summer of Code project and the discussion on what an accessible in-distro backup facility needs to taste line. We need to solve the problem of providing a generally useful and accessible backup facility that can handle removable media, local harddrive, and network backup targets whenever a backup is requested before we attempt to automate backups strictly for fresh-install preparations. The issue of backups is much larger than pre-fresh-reinstall, and if you are only backing up /home to prep for a fresh install of a new Fedora release then I hope Fedora starts doing monthly releases to encourage people to backup their personal data atleast monthly.
- Clean install
- List my new packages and yum the diff - Go through my lists of /home/me/ and /etc/ and move-reconfig from the backups
Easily said... not easily done if there is system configuration syntax changes which requires hand editting. Didn't we just see this sort of thing happen in fc5 with the internal changes in apache's modules?
- Then muck around for the next month or so fine tuning all the stuff that I don't know about and never will that naturally gets customised through use - By which time it's time to go through the whole process again! (not quite:) So, what a blessing it would be to have a wizard that by a few clicks of a mouse stepped you effortlessly and comprehensively through that pita I've just listed above.
rpmpkg log already exists rpm -V can tell you what configs have been customized rpm -qf can be used to see if files in /etc/ are unknown to rpm and thus may need to be backed up. writing a simple script to parse these isn't a big deal.... in fact this is the sort of thing perl is only good for. The big gaping hole in the set of technology needed for your wizard is a comprehensive and accessible backup technology that is easily configured and can handle whatever media a home system has access to for backing up hundreds of gigs of personal data. While I didn't have a chance to reiterate this as my #1 wishlist item for fc6, I take that opportunity now. The biggest missing piece of desktop user oriented technology in Fedora Core is in my opinion a robust and accessible backup/restore tool. -jef -- Fedora-desktop-list mailing list Fedora-desktop-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/fedora-desktop-list
