which half are you in?

[dave mallery <dmallery@cia-g.com>]

hi list!

there's a saying that all people are in two groups:

those who have done an rm -R * in root
and those who have not done it yet.

last evening, i joined the former group after six years of linux and a 
lifetime of computing.

one learns vast humility in milliseconds.  no matter how fast you hit a 
control/c, almost everything is gone... there are no programs left to 
run!

unbelieveably, i did this rm -R as i was cleaning up after a new system 
backup.  i had been using mondo, but the mindi portion of it had stopped 
working a few weeks ago and was still dead.  (in testing, these things 
seem to clean up after a few weeks of upgrades)

this backup proc basically does the following:

dpkg --get selections | gzip > dpkg-list.gz
a full tar of /home
another of /root and /etc.
then writes the stuff to a cd-r.

so, i did a minimal woody install from my cds. (fortunately i keep a 
hard copy of df taped to the box!)

then i edited the /etc/apt/sources.list to point to testing and let the
minimal install (no tasksel) finish via dselect. (over the net, it took
an hour and a half)

then: 

gunzip dpkg-list | dpkg --set-selections 

then another dselect upgrade... it took all night. (my average bandwidth
is 10kb/sec) then in the morning, after all the installation settled
out:

tar -xvf HOMEbackup.tar from the / directory.  it restored
my /home account. then 

tar -xvf ROOTbackup.tar /root 
tar -xvf ROOTbackup.tar /etc 

and i was back, bereft only of my bookmarks because i didn't back up
~/.galeon.  you can find this and other procs in something called
debian-backup.org (??) lost my bookmarks!

i just sat there in awe last night and this morning as my system was 
reconstituted from nothing... hundreds of apps installed without mishap, 
all at the latest level.  and up came gnome; up came my desktop, just as 
it was before the moment of truth!  

i'd just want to say a heart-felt thank you to all who make this
wonderful thing called debian.

dave

ps: where is gnome-terminal?  
-- 
Dave Mallery, K5EN          (debian testing & woody)  
PO Box 520         .~.    _      Ramah,  NM  87321     
                   /V\   -o)
no gates...       /( )\  /\\     running Debian GNU/Linux
  no windows!     ^^^^^ _\_v        free at last!