On Fri, May 02, 2008 at 01:27:49PM -0700, Russell Hanaghan wrote:
> Hiya!
>
> So while Dave warmed up the crowd on the M$ related questions...
>
> ...and at the risk of being stoned in the Linux public square, is there
> *any* form of the System Restore function that follws the model of the
> ~other~ OS?
>
> One of my former direct reports, a wiz kid sys admin in the Bay area all
> ready gave me the standard smart a$$ response; (Er, yeah! It's called a
> "RE-INSTALL" ...lemme spall it for yah again!! ha ha ha ha) So after I got
> up off the floor from gut level laughter.. (NOT!), I continue to believe
> that for nooby converts, and maintaining it's customization ability via the
> Linux model, would be a very useful tool!!!
>
> I have spent many hours recently setting up a custom audio distro that will
> be remastered and available as a live CD. I'm no Linux sys admin...I figure
> stuff out any way I can, take longer than most to get it just how I like
> it....and then I say..hmm, just one more thing I'd like to change....and I
> bjork the window manager or some such thing. To re-install at that point
> kills MANY hours of fruitfull work and I'm old enough that I don't need
> cliche lessons! :)
>
I do the following occasionally (not often enough):
1) I tar up the /etc directory
2) I do a "dpkg -l > status-of-installed-programs.log" to keep track of what software I've installed
3) I tar up the entire /usr/local directory tree into a separate tar file
4) I keep all my important data files in /home/music-projects, and I rsync that up to an external USB drive periodically for backups. I also keep any code or scripts in CVS and rsync that one up too periodically.
A "system restore" is basically a reinstall from a distro CD. Then I use the status-of-installed-programs.log file to grep out a list of installed packages ("ii" status), awk to get the name of the packages, and then "apt-get install" them. Then I either gradually pick through the backed-up files in /etc and copy them over, or just wholesale replace the directory, depending on how much of a hurry I'm in. The data of course I've had rsync'ed onto a separate drive, so I just copy that one over.
This is a long process, and I've been getting sufficiently paranoid lately to have obtained an extra 2.5" PATA drivein an external USB enclosure. I'm going to format it and copy over my entire drive so that I have a "hot spare". If my drive dies, I can just (hopefully) replace it with the new one and off I go.
-ken
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