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Re: Removing desktop environments



On Sun, Feb 04, 2007 at 02:06:57PM -0500, Greg Folkert wrote:
> On Sun, 2007-02-04 at 13:42 -0500, cga2000 wrote:
> > I want to remove all the crud from my system in order to be able to run
> > backups that are fast, small, and simple.
> > 
> > I installed gnome and kde at one point but I never use them.  
> > I have no intention of reinstalling them at a later date.
> 
> The issue here is that you only need to backup your data. Backups
> of /usr and /var and so on mean nothing.
> 
> dpkg --get-selections > installed.packages.list
> 
> tar jcvf $DATE-backup.tar.bz2 /home installed.packages.list /etc
> 
> It really make ZERO sense to do full backups this way. Debian can be
> installed as a base system and then re-installed faster and easier than
> restoring.
> 
> You really only need backup your list of installed packages, /etc
> and /home and anywhere else you have stored REAL data.
> 
> Remember, you are not dealing with Windows. Most Unix systems, things
> like Netware and OSX are all designed to be re-installed quickly and
> then the "data" restored quickly.
> 
> A /usr on a CD does you a crap-load of no-good if you system is toast.

What you _may_ want to do, especially if you're on a slow (or no)
network link is to make a cache of the debs that are installed on your
system.  I think that there are some packages that make custom CDs to
restore your existing setup.  That plus /etc, /home, /usr/local, and 
/var/local, plus info you need to reinstall (like outputs of sfdisk -d, 
fdisk -lu, dpkg --get-selections, and your bootloader config), should be
everything you need to backup.  Some database systems have their own
backup procedures over and above this.

Doug.



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