Re: Backing up a Debian system
On Sat, 3 Aug 2002, Matt Zimmerman wrote:
> On Fri, Aug 02, 2002 at 11:39:19PM +0200, Andreas Metzler wrote:
>
> > Matt Zimmerman <mdz@debian.org> wrote:
> > > Take a look inside /var/lib/dpkg/status. dpkg --get-selections is a subset of
> > > that information.
> >
> > How about
> > dpkg --get-selections '*'
>
> The point was that the status database contains other information, in
> addition to the selections, which is vital for a proper restore. E.g., the
> version number of the installed package.
>
> In fact, I would say that the entire /var/lib/dpkg hierarchy would not be
> too much to backup. This would ensure that statoverrides, diversions, and
> data for similar future mechanisms can be restored.
>
Wouldn't just restoring /var/lib/dpkg cause inconsistency problems under
/var/cache/apt ? I would worry about not having the specific package
versions available unless they were in stable. Packages in stable don't
change much, but when they do, it's usually for a very good reason and thus
beneficial to upgrade.
My personal preference is to get the latest package anyway. I thus
wouldn't backup the packages, their files (other than config and custom
files) and also their versions. But I can see having the package version
being backed up as being useful to some users and that's why I'm asking
more.
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