Re: how to backup and restore /var partition.
On 11/07/10 11:12 PM, Bob Proulx wrote:
> H. S. wrote:
>> I want to reinstall Debian on a machine which is also running my local
>> web server. I am planning on backing up /home, /var and /etc.
>
> Backups are good. But...
>
> Re-install? Why? Is the machine running now? If so then why not
> simply upgrade it? Please tell us more! Sometimes people come to
> Debian from other distros where upgrades do not work and so they think
> that they need to install from scratch to move forward. But in Debian
> upgrades do work and have for almost forever. Really!
I want to use LVM in that machine.
I have used Debian for some hears and I fully understand your point
regarding upgrades.
>
> Overwriting /var with an old copy will cause trouble. I am sure that
> you have some need in mind. Why do you want to do this? What is
> there that you want to restore? If something like /var/www then you
> can safely restore just /var/www okay. But otherwise just overwriting
> /var from a different and older system will definitely break a lot of
> system functionality. For example dpkg keeps its brain there.
I am going to exclude /var/cache/apt, or even /var/cache. I have never
restored /var before so I am still looking for information.
/var/www is the most important one to restore. As you wrote, it looks to
be quite a simple to copy over www from the older one and than install
and start apache on the new installation.
>
> You will probably have some trouble with /etc too. Because the new
I know, that is why I am not restoring /etc. I will keep it only for
config records that I do not want to go hunting around on google after I
reinstall.
> system will have newer syntax in various files the /etc and again,
> overwriting those with the older systems versions will cause trouble.
> You could go through your systems one by one and use the old files as
> a template and re-edit the new files into shape using the old ones as
> reference. That is about the best way to do it if you really want to
> move the functionality onto the new system from an older one.
Yes, I agree, and that is what I usually do.
>
>> Regarding apache, I suppose I just copy the /var/log/apache to the new
>> system before starting apache?
>
> System logs would be okay to move forward. But note that you would
> lose the information that happened during the installation if you move
> /var/log/dpkg.log forward. But logs are informational only so nothing
> will break if those are lost.
Apt and dpkg logs are not that important, so no problem there.
>
>> Any further tips are much appreciated.
>
> Upgrade. Don't re-install. :-)
I would, if there were an easy way to manage my current partition scheme
with LVM. Is there?
Thanks,
regards.
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