Dear Debian users, I have configured my system to my specific needs by installing packages, changing their configuration, adding a useful HTML-Documentation collection and installing some programs from source. The resulting system is used on four different machines with two different architectures: amd64 and i386. I have been using "Remastersys" (http://www.remastersys.com/) to build a live-DVD from my system that can be installed on other computers and is really nice for administration purposes: Carry a fully-featured working-environment on a single-layered DVD.
But I am still not fully satisfied with this solution because making a live-DVD out of the currently-running system has some issues: 1. If I ever need to re-install my system and do not have the remastersys-DVD available, I will have trouble restoring all the custom configuration. This could e.g. happen if an update to a new debian release fails reproducibly. 2. I cannot switch my architecture even though most of my customization consists of text files and would not need to be changed by any means. This is especially problematic as I have to maintain two architectures at the same time which means that I have to maintain two different live-DVDs that should contain the same configuration. 3. Some of my machines need special configuration, e.g. graphics drivers and therefore still need customization after having installed the live-DVD. 4. Customization is hardly ever updated because it is a hassle to update the software on two systems (one for amd64, one for i386) and then re-install the complete system on the third and fourth machine in order to have a new software version or new configuration there. This is also the reason, the dvds for the both architectures are never actually containing the same configuration and when I change something on my main system (amd64) I often do not bother to update the i386 counterpart. 5. The size of the system is limited to about 4 GiB because remastersys (actually the DVD file-system) cannot have files bigger than this specific size. This has not become a great issue yet, but some software already needed to be excluded from the system to fit onto a DVD. 6. Sometimes I install additional packages on my production-system (that is usually used as source for the live-DVD) which I do not want to have on the DVD because they are only used for a short period of time or needed for some testing-purposes. This is why I already got another idea a long time ago: I thought about writing a shell script to transform a basic Debian system into "my" system by simply copying all the configuration, compiling all the custom programs and installing all the additional packages I need. But this seemed to be a bad concept as it would be extremely problematic to test such a script: It would always require a "new" Debian-installation and therefore also result in the i386 part not being updated with configuration files properly. I have addressed the first issue by centralizing all the configuration in /opt/ma (a directory containing most of the customization including additional software-binaries, HTML documentation, desktop wallpapers, scripts, etc.) and /etc/skel (newly created users get correct Firefox-configuration and plugins, Fluxbox-configuration is linked to /opt/ma, basic directories are created, etc.) Apart from that I maintain a register of changed configuration files outside these two directories that is more or less complete. Even with this preparation, it takes very long to re-create the system out of that information and it has quite some disadvantages: For example, the self-compiled binaries are never installed "correctly", because their man-pages is not in the system, they are not in the usual "bin" directories but in /opt/ma/bin instead and the multi-user concept of Linux is destabilized by placing some essential configuration into /opt/ma which the user cannot change directly. Instead, if anyone needs to customize e.g. fluxbox, they need to copy the configuration and make their ~/.fluxbox/init point to it. This is a minor issue as all the systems are "single-user" machines, but it seems "dirty". Recently, when I read about Debian packaging and preseeding on this list, I got another idea: I could package all my customization into some Debian packages and some virtual packages which would then install all software I use as dependencies. This would also make the updating of my i386 machines much easier: If I only changed configuration or such they could just update via aptitude update && aptitude full-upgrade or similar and if I updated some of my self-compiled software, I could (a) use the source-package or (b) download an i386 version that was cross-compiled on my amd64 machine. I would be able to have the most recent configuration and package selection on all three systems while only maintaining a common and customized repository. In order to back up my system I would only need to backup the repository. Live-DVDs could still be created with remastersys but I would no longer depend on them and I could safely do re-installations even changing Debian-releases with minor problems only. I could further divide my custom packages to be able to create a CD version of my system with limited features or such. Adding some of the customization to my friends' systems would also be much easier. Is it a good idea to use the Debian package system for these needs? Or is there something I have overlooked? Are there other systems/programs that probably already automate much of what I am aiming for? (Because I believe creating packages of all my customization will be quite some work and I should therefore think and ask first.) Btw: I am using Debian 6.0.6 "Squeeze" amd64 and on other systems: i386. Kind regards and TIA, Linux-Fan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". 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