2 May
2008
2 May
'08
11:52 p.m.
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