On Friday 20 May 2005 03:59 am, Stephan Wehner wrote: > What am I trying to back up? > > What happened to me was I was running Mepis, and did an apt-get xfce4 > (I think it was xfcr4). But then startx wouldn't work any longer. I > thought apt-get would be pretty safe... > Then I switched to FreeBSD and after a port-upgrade installed the new > version of firefox. Then firefox wouldn't work any more. > > In both cases I had no clue what had changed, or how to undo it. > > Hence my original question. I think starting over with OpenBSD will be > worth it. But I'm trying to decide on a good way to set up backups > right from the start. > > Are you saying I should put the /usr and /etc directories and so on in > a cvs repository? Will I get to know which files to checkout as I > install more ports? Or instead of a cvs repository I thought of just > taking snapshots before any system changes. But then I thought this > should be a common problem so I asked how to go about it.
How about tar and a DVD burner or a USB harddrive. Granted, this is not an ideal backup situation but if all you are worried about is restoring after an update then it should work fine. CVS, well you are going to need GOBS of diskspace to keep the repository in. Every time a binary file gets updated it will keep a full copy of the updated file, not a very efficient way to go about keeping a system snapshot. Tim Donahue
