Re: Backing up a Debian system
On Wed, 31 Jul 2002, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> On Wed, Jul 31, 2002 at 04:30:59PM -0500, Drew Scott Daniels wrote:
>
> > On Wed, 31 Jul 2002, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> > How do you save the package versions, did I miss that in --get-selections?
>
> --get-selections only stores the selections themselves. You'd be better off
> just backing up the entire status file.
>
/var/lib/dpkg/status ? For a restore of packages, wouldn't
dpkg's --set-selections be needed? How can one select a paticular package
version?
> > My etc collects quite a few default configuration files so many of these I
> > can get from reinstalling their packages. I also sometimes have files that
> > I forget under standard directories, or special modifications. Ideally
> > all of these would be documented, but some sysadmins inherit a system, and
> > some don't remember where they put their documentation. I like to check
> > all directories for non package files.
>
> Yes, it should be possible to omit unmodified configuration files as well.
> In most cases, these are insignificant when compared with the size of the
> backup, but if the restore doesn't go exactly according to plan, it helps to
> have a minimal set of configs.
>
I'd rather save that for full backups.
> I don't install non-packaged stuff in package-managed areas, with the
> exception of /etc (which gets backed up in its entirety); any non-packaged
> software that I expect to keep goes in /*/local.
>
I keep track of non-packaged stuff now, but I didn't always. Checking for
non-packaged files *everywhere* would likely be useful to many Debian
sys-admins.
Drew Daniels
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