On Tue, 26 Aug 2003, Angus Lees wrote:
> At Mon, 25 Aug 2003 22:52:32 +1200, Adam Bogacki wrote:
> > In sum, I'm starting to contemplate reinstalling Debian, something I
> > am prepared to go to lengths to avoid because I would lose a lot of
> > hard-won material, because I'm living with an 80 yr old who is only
> > starting to get over her computer-phobia, and because I also have
> > other things to do.
>
> Where/what is this "hard-won material"?
>
> Just copy your important data off somewhere temporarily (maybe just
> another partition) and reinstall.
>
> The alternative is going to be *weeks* of hand hacking stuff. If
> you'd simply reinstalled you'd be done by now.
Probably right.
It's a good idea to get a firm understanding of which parts of a system
you do and don't modify from what the system sets up for you.
Almost everything you want to keep should be in /etc and /home. On some
systems you'd include /usr/local/etc in that. It's not a bad idea to
make a note of any areas outside of that where you modify files.
I know that it's possible under debian to get a list of where files come
from (ie which package), and probably you can also get checksums. I'm not
sure on the details though.
You also want the list of installed software, which you should normally be
able to get from apt.... Hmm. Presumably you can get it from looking
directly at where apt stores its files.
The other thing is that while it can be time consuming, starting from
scratch is typically not at all a disempowering thing once the new user
gets going on it. All the stuff that was mystifying the first time round
is at least somewhat familiar on a repeat run, and provides a sense that
actually they have got the hang of a lot of this stuff.
--
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Andrew McNaughton In Sydney
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