On Fri, Jun 05, 2009 at 05:57:26PM +0000, Laurentiu Pancescu wrote:
<snip>
> I guess the automatically generated uids during the new installation
> were different from the ones in my backed up passwd/group files.
>
> What would be the best way to restore the full system in such a case?
<snip>
> 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 usually end up doing a full reinstall when there's a new major release
number (e.g. 4.* to 5.*). Here's what I do. I'm on dialup:
1. A minimal install (don't select any tasks). Create
my own username during the install.
2. Install mc, links2, ppp, pppconfig, exim4, and configure
3. Set up sources.list to use the correct mirror and
security.debian.org
4. Run an aptitude update
5. Install security updates.
6. Restore my backups (which were created in /var/local/backup)
back to /var/local/backup from backup media.
7. untar etc.tgz.aes (via pipe through openssl) to /root/restore
8. Inspect the old passwd file for username/UIDs to recreate
9. Recreate those users, ensure that the UID's match.
10. untar home/ from backup.tgz.aes
11. using the list of packages that were installed, reinstall
in related chunks (so I get some packages installed rather
than waiting 5 days to get _any_ packages installed).
12. Once I get all packages reinstalled, ln -s /root/restore to
/home/dtutty/restore
13. (lucky 13), Have one VT with my own user reading ~/restore/etc/*
and the other VT as root, compare each file and change as
necessary. It only takes about an hour. I find that this gives
me the advantage of getting the updated file (e.g. newer
options, comments) but with my old config needs met.
I hope this helps.
Doug.
> P.S. Please cc me when replying, I'm not subscribed to debian-user
> (too high volume).
Done
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