>> On Tue 26 Nov 2024 at 01:21:31 (-0500), Charlie Gibbs wrote:
> How do the rest of you deal with all the user-added stuff that vanishes
> when you do a fresh install? Are there some tricks I can use, rather
> than painstakingly re-installing all my utilities one by one?
I use a filesystem "/dist" to keep various installations I've done:
/dist
| +--i386-pc-solaris2.11
| +--sparc-sun-solaris2.10
| +--x86_64-centos5-linux
| +--x86_64-centos6-linux
| +--x86_64-freebsd-10.4-rel
| +--x86_64-freebsd-11.3-rel
| +--x86_64-oracle6.9-linux
| +--x86_64-oracle6.10-linux
| +--x86_64-oracle7.9-linux
Each system directory (named by architecture and OS-release) contains
a tree like this:
/dist
| +--x86_64-whatever
| | +--bin # original /bin
| | +--boot # original /boot
| | +--etc.orig # original /etc
| | +--etc # /etc with all my changes
| | +--home # interesting parts of $HOME like dotfiles
| | +--lib # original /lib
| | +--libexec # original /libexec, if present
| | +--root # anything I added to root home directory
| | +--sbin # original /sbin
| | +--STIG # STIG software and check results, if any
| | +--usr
| | | +--bin # original /usr/bin
| | | +--lib # original /usr/lib
| | | +--local # anything I installed
| | +--var
| | | +--cron
| | | | +--tabs # scheduled jobs for me, root, etc.
| | | +--log # any /var/log files I created --
# placeholders with owner and permissions
I create this tree when I have a server/workstation I'm happy with,
and I update it when I'm about to retire the system.
The biggest {time,error}-saver was doing this immediately after getting
a bootable system so I can recover from a bad change to an /etc file:
root# mkdir /etc.orig
root# cd /etc
root# find . -print | cpio -pdum /etc.orig
HTH.
--
Karl Vogel I don't speak for anyone but myself
CEO assistant: "please reset CEO's password, he's too drunk to remember it."
--Reddit "unusual IT support tickets", 5 Nov 2024
