On 01/27/2013 05:44 PM, Martin Steigerwald wrote: > Am Sonntag, 27. Januar 2013 schrieb Linux-Fan: >> 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. > > Maybe I am too old school for this: > > For > 8 years I just have my Debians and I rsync them to another disk.
I believe this is a good full-system backup strategy but I would rather like to backup the customization only or somehow separate it from the basic system in order to give it different importance at backup times. > In case one goes kaboom I take that disk, rsync them back and be done with > it (of course this includes partitioning and installing boot loader again). This is what I have the system DVD for: It can be installed with a remastersys-script and then be used as if nothing had happened. For a backup of the current system this is safe. > This approach has not failed me once. > > (Writing this from a Debian installation that I just copied from my backup > disk yesterday in order to remake the root partition BTRFS with larger node > and leaf size, which was not possible, due to the kernel in GRML 2012-05 I > used was too old for these kind of games.) > > I have yet also to see a Debian installation that reproducably fails to > update to the next release. > > Heck, I deal with a lot of Debian machines, but I never ever saw something > like this. Good to know. I also do not want it to happen. But there can always be a first time. > Yes, in case of some special setups, there have been issues, but with some > experience with the Debian package management there so far has always been a > way out for me. > > Sorry, I have no experience in this remastersys stuff. > >> 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. > > This may just work well, I never tried it. > > I just wonder whether you are trying to over-engineer. :) This is why I first wanted to ask :). > Is the configuration on all machines exactly identical? No, it is almost identical. My main-system has more HDDs and therefore a different /etc/fstab and /etc/mdadm/mdadm.conf. Some things like the conky-configuration are also not identical because most of the systems are single-core systems but my amd64 machine is a quad-core. And for most systems (except my amd64 machine) I want the server-services to be disabled while they should run on my main-machine. > Actually I do not do the effort. > > What I have is this: > > - apt-get install bzr > - cd /etc > - bzr init > - bzr add fstab hostname network/interfaces resolv.conf … > - bzr commit -m "Initial." > > And in case of an error: bzr uncommit :) I have never used a version-system so far and this would probably only work for configuration files, unless I put the whole system into version control -- but this would not solve my issue with differences on i386 and amd64 unless I put my HTML-Documentation into /etc (I used to have /etc/ma instead of /opt/ma but found it the wrong directory for my purpose) > I usually upgrade my systems. But on the 64-Bit switch all I did is: > > - rsync -a /mnt/…/my-old-debian/etc/.bzr /etc > - bzr diff > - review which changes I like to apply again and which I like to dismiss > > I also do this with dot files in my home directory. This only works if the only customization is in /etc and ~. But unfortunately I sometimes need to use software which is not available in the Debian repositories and therefore also had some binary applications which needed to be transferred. > For my 5-6 Debian systems and for quite some customer machines this has been > fine so far. For customers with *lots* of machines something Puppet may well > make sense. How about software I had to compile myself? Can it be synchronized without creating Debian packages for it? I already read something about puppet and I also thought it could be a way of solving the problem. But then I also think that I already have the package-system installed and why I should not prefer something already there to another solution which could add additional complexity... But maybe I should have a closer look at it before starting to package everything. Thanks for your reply so far! Linux-Fan -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/51056a2a.60...@web.de
