On Fri, Jul 22, 2016 at 11:04:23AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote:
I have a laptop set aside for experimenting with Debian installs.
I've not yet defined my personal "optimal" install.
My nominally base install will be a reasonably standard CLI plus a
personally preferred default set of utilities.
That base install *SHALL BE* on a read-only partition (e.g. sda5).
I wish to "almost clone" it to sda5, (e.g. sda6, sda7, sda8).
The above "almost" refers to whatever is required to run Debian as installed
to that *explicit* partition.
I will make various install/configuration choices to the "almost cloned"
partitions.
My then current "optimal" install will then be placed on either sda5 or sda
6 as I consider appropriate.
Does that make sense?
I can think of two ways of doing this. One involves VMs, which
you said you don't like.
The other involves ZFS.
Install ZFS-on-Linux, use it as your root. Snapshot the root.
Clone it X times. Change the clones.
-dsr-