On Wed, Jul 21, 2010 at 9:11 AM, H.S. <hs.sa...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 21/07/10 08:41 AM, B. Alexander wrote: > > >> 3. Build the new machine with the netinst or businesscard cd. When asked >> what type of system to build (package selection), uncheck all the boxes. >> >> Reboot into your new system, copy pkglist.hostname from step 1 onto the >> machine. Do the following: >> > > I think you are also supposed to change your sources.list file at this > point (for example if your machine was using Debian Unstable but if you used > a Stable or Testing installer). > > True, I neglected to mention this. I usually copy at least /etc/apt/apt.conf, /etc/apt/sources.list (I use a universal one, so one size fits all), and /etc/apt/sources.list.d over.
> dpkg --set-selections< pkglist.hostname >> apt-get dselect-upgrade >> >> This should give you a system with a nearly identical set of packages that >> you can then tweak to your hearts content. >> > > I am not sure what you think about /home, but usually that is the more > important consideration for me. What I usually do is: > 1. Make note of the UIDs & GIDs of the users (or the order in which they > were created). 'ls -nl /home' lists those. > 2. Make a backup of /var as well to restore users' mail (in /var/mail) and > cronjobs (in /var/spool/cron/crontabs) and perhaps at jobs (in > /var/spool/cront). > Good points. I was under the assumption that you would not be transferring data over from the old to the new, so I didn't consider it. Of course, if you are managing more than a few boxes, you also might want to consider a configuration management tool like cfengine or puppet. Then you could "script" all of your UIDs and GIDs as well as other configuration details. For instance, I have a list of "essential" packages (essential for me) that I install on every box. With cfengine, I can automagically install them as well as edit/modify that list in one place. > Finally, backing up /etc and restoring it later prevents you from having to > do all the configurations again. > Be careful with that. Especially if you are "cloning" a box that has been around for a while. Carte blanche copying of /etc can lead to problems. There is the problem of "etc drift," even with a fairly recently built box. > > [1] You can actually back these files up and have a pool of different >> "types" of machine. For instance, I have a workstation packagelist, a >> laptop >> list, as well as lists for the various types of bastion hosts in my >> network, >> including a wiki host (mediawiki), firewall, backup server, etc. >> > > All good points. > > Thanks. > --b
