On Jun 2, 2011 1:48 PM, "Ralf Mardorf" <ralf.mardorf@alice-dsl.net> wrote:
>
> On Thu, 2011-06-02 at 13:21 -0400, shawn wilson wrote:
> >
> > On Jun 2, 2011 1:06 PM, "Ralf Mardorf" <ralf.mardorf@alice-dsl.net>
> > wrote:
> > >
> > > On Thu, 2011-06-02 at 14:01 +0100, Tom Furie wrote:
> > > > On Thu, Jun 02, 2011 at 04:24:52AM +0200, Ralf Mardorf wrote:
> > > >
> > > > > It takes just some minutes to restore a complete install from an
> > > > > archive, IMO it makes no sense to make a deafult install and
> > then to
> > > > > copy back configs and data and to install additional stuff. And
> > what
> > > > > is
> > > >
> > > > Fair enough. Whatever works, works. :)
> > > >
> > > > > Btw. at the moment I can't install libslv2-dev, because there's
> > a
> > > > > dependency missing for Debian stable?! If I should e.g. solve
> > this
> > > > > issue, I won't have to do this again, when a backup is needed.
> > > >
> > > > I had no trouble installing libslv2-dev on any of my squeeze
> > systems.
> > > > Possibly a conflict from another repository?
> > >
> > > Yep, I need to do a fresh Debian testing install. I started with
> > Debian
> > > stable and now I know that I need testing, but I guess I've got an
> > > uncertain mix of stable and testing.
> > >
> >
> > You can use packages from both (IIRC its a setting in apt.conf). What
> > I'd suggest is to have a test (sandbox) type box (preferably a vm
> > where you can revert to a snapshot) and make your own repository from
> > that that your production hosts use.
> >
> >
>
> chroot might be an option, but this could cause a lot of unneeded issues
> and I guess a virtual machine can't be used, at least I don't know how
> to ensure that this emulates the real behaviour, when using professional
> audio cards etc.. If there e.g. is jitter, is it caused by the
> visualisation or is it regarding to the real hardware and drivers?
> For a DAW you're dealing with HPET, timer resolution is 1000000000 Hz,
> expected jitter for e.g. hw MIDI is far below a millisecond.
>
I wasn't talking about configuring your software much on the vm. Just using the vm to make sure everything you need will install correctly and staging packages to update your production boxes from. This way, you know when there's an issue between stable and testing packages ahead of time. Then you point your production box to your local repo of known good packages and let them update from that.
This is sorta out of the realm of 'backup'. But sense you mentioned needing to figure what stable vs testing packages you have, I just figured is throw out what I'd do (its ten minutes more effort and will save tons of headache down the road).