On Fri,05.Jun.09, 17:57:26, Laurentiu Pancescu wrote: > > Hello everyone, > > After a fresh (re)install of Lenny, I installed all cca. 800 > previously installed packages (from a list file, via "xargs aptitude > install") and then restored /etc from my rdiff-backup archive > (containing just /etc, /home and lists of installed packages). It > worked fine, but I ended up with some directories having the wrong > owners (e.g. logcheck files being owned by hal, ntp lock directory > owned by gdm), which broke some things. I guess the automatically > generated uids during the new installation were different from the > ones in my backed up passwd/group files. Seems to me like you tried to restore more than just /etc > What would be the best way to restore the full system in such a case? > Here's a list of possibilities I thought of, but I'm open to new ones: > - restore /etc before installing the packages (but then I'll get asked > a lot during installation about what to do with the existing > configuration files) > - first install etckeeper, then install all packages, then restore > /etc from backups and then try to analyze and fix what might be broken > using source control diffs > - install packages, restore everything in /etc except passwd, shadow and group Why not restore those as well? I don't have that much experience with restoring (I like the opportunity to start fresh), but options 2 and 3 sound good to me > BTW, can anyone suggest a better backup approach? I normally follow > testing, where new versions of packages appear often, so I would like > to avoid backing up everything (/usr eats up too much space with > incremental backups). Backing up /etc, /home and some files in /var > would be ideal, since I can get the rest by installing, but how can I > best restore the full system in such a case? I think you're already on the right track. > P.S. Please cc me when replying, I'm not subscribed to debian-user > (too high volume). There are ways to follow the list without being subscribed (gmane, googlegroups, ...) Regards, Andrei -- If you can't explain it simply, you don't understand it well enough. (Albert Einstein)
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