Michael Chesterton <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> uttered the following thing: > > I used to really enjoy tweaking my desktop, and dot files like > .bashrc, and etc. But had a change of heart for a number of reasons. > > I'd jump on to another system and be lost without all my tweaks, and > when i needed to upgrade, reinstall or build a new box, it would take > me ages to re-tweak, if I could be bothered, and I'd never get it just > right. So I would avoid upgrading, and the longer i left it, the bigger > hassle it became.
I've had similar issues. Some of my systems have LOTS of tweaks and customisations on them, and upgrading was a big pain, leaving me with older software running. I recently bought a nice Asus wireless router that can run openwrt and decided to move all of my old network configuration from my debian based gateway. I've got *lots* of tweaks - dhcp, ipv6, ipsec, tunnels, proxies, ppp, VPN tunnels, etc. It took me a while to actually realise what I had. But I finally moved all the pure network stuff over to the openWrt box in such a way as to make it upgradeable when need be. How? Documentation, documentation, documentation (sorry, mr chair) I started with defaults and every single change I made from the default box was documented, often just by copying the changed config file to a USB stick. Copies of all non-default packages and non-default files are saved there. Where possible, I made changes to only "user-editable" files rather than primary files. Also, i update a list of all these changes and their purpose, so I know what i've done and why. This means that I should be able to easily upgrade - just install then re-copy the packages and config files over from the backup. No need to stick to defaults - just remember to document everything that is changed. BB -- SLUG - Sydney Linux User's Group Mailing List - http://slug.org.au/ Subscription info and FAQs: http://slug.org.au/faq/mailinglists.html
