Using cvs to back up the system is going to be very
inefficient, especially with binary files. I'd suggest
going with your idea of a system snapshot before any
major system changes. A straightforward dump(8) and
restore(8) is easy to set up and your backed up data
can also be restored just by booting from any OpenBSD
CD providing it is stored on a local disk.
I run the following script from the cron every Sunday
night so that I can always restore back to a few days
ago if the worst happens. (The /scratch partition is a
separate disk to the rest of the system)
Works well enough for me.
- Simon
--- BEGIN ---
#!/bin/sh
dump -af - /dev/wd0a | gzip >
/scratch/backup/root.dump.gz
dump -af - /dev/ccd0a | gzip >
/scratch/backup/usr.dump.gz
dump -af - /dev/ccd0b | gzip >
/scratch/backup/var.dump.gz
dump -af - /dev/ccd0d | gzip >
/scratch/backup/home.dump.gz
dump -af - /dev/ccd0g | gzip >
/scratch/backup/cvs.dump.gz
disklabel wd0 > /scratch/backup/disklabel_wd0.txt
disklabel wd1 > /scratch/backup/disklabel_wd1.txt
disklabel ccd0 > /scratch/backup/disklabel_ccd0.txt
cp /etc/ccd.conf /scratch/backup
dd if=/dev/rwd0a of=/dev/rwd1a bs=16b seek=1 skip=1
conv=noerror
fsck -y /dev/rwd1a
--- END ---
--- Stephan Wehner <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> What am I trying to back up?
>
> What happened to me was I was running Mepis, and did
> an apt-get xfce4
> (I think it was xfcr4). But then startx wouldn't
> work any longer. I
> thought apt-get would be pretty safe...
> Then I switched to FreeBSD and after a port-upgrade
> installed the new version of
> firefox. Then firefox wouldn't work any more.
>
> In both cases I had no clue what had changed, or how
> to undo it.
>
> Hence my original question. I think starting over
> with OpenBSD will be
> worth it. But I'm trying to decide on a good way to
> set up backups
> right from the start.
>
> Are you saying I should put the /usr and /etc
> directories and so on in
> a cvs repository? Will I get to know which files to
> checkout as I
> install more ports? Or instead of a cvs repository I
> thought of just
> taking snapshots before any system changes. But then
> I thought this
> should be a common problem so I asked how to go
> about it.
>
> Thanks
>
> Stephan
>
> On 5/19/05, Aaron Glenn <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> wrote:
> > On 5/19/05, Stephan Wehner
> <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> > > What is recommended for bare-metal backups?
> Scenario: I build a new
> > > application, but something breaks and I want to
> revert back. I thought
> > > a neat way would be to have the whole system
> under version control.
> > > Can it be done reliably with one PC only? How do
> porters go about
> > > this?
> >
> > what do you expect to break? rcs works pretty well
> for system
> > configuration files. what are you trying to
> backup?
> >
> > aaron.glenn
>
>
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