Re: [gentoo-user] Re: Reinstall

[Bill Kenworthy <billk@iinet.net.au>]

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I suggest either taking a full dd|bzip2 style backup of the hardisk to removable media  for the simplest reinstall. Compliment with borgbackup or dervish for space efficient backups to capture more recent changes.  Reinstall is the reverse .. lay down the dd image  update from the backups with rsync. No need to get caught in messy  install routines that will take a lot longer with an uncertain outcome.  I have a few arm systems and seem to be doing it at least once a month as the sdcards reach their end of life. 
BillK


On 20 June 2022 2:26:27 am AWST, Francisco Ares <frares@gmail.com> wrote:
>Em dom., 19 de jun. de 2022 às 14:33, Michael
><confabulate@kintzios.com> escreveu:
>>
>> On Sunday, 19 June 2022 18:22:34 BST Grant Edwards wrote:
>> > On 2022-06-19, Francisco Ares <frares@gmail.com> wrote:
>> > > Just for the sake of preventing a future failure, besides personal
>> > > files (minimum and obvious) the "world" file and the binary packages,
>> > > built along with the package installation, what else should I backup
>> > > so that I would be able to quickly restore the same full working
>> > > Gentoo in a new hardware without having to work from stage3 up? The
>> > > portage tree is one of those items, for sure. But what else?
>> >
>> > Make a backup copy of everything under /etc.
>> >
>> > I used to try to backup individual /etc/... files that I would need,
>> > but I always forgot something.
>> >
>> > --
>> > Grant
>>
>> Yes, besides /var/lib/portage/world and /etc/ you may also want to back up
>> your /boot and kernel config, assuming the hardware (MoBo & peripherals) is the
>> same (same drivers).  I wouldn't bother backing up portage, a resync will
>> download it afresh.  You might want to save /distfiles if you're on a slow
>> Internet link, but it has to be a copy of the current versions, otherwise the
>> latest version of each package source will have to be downloaded anyway.
>>
>> If you're running databases you'll also want to keep a backup of the
>> respective /var/lib/*sql directory and if you're running a webserver /var/www/
>> * - but you would be aware of the need to keep a fresh backup of all this data
>> anyway.
>
>Also good point, one can always do a "make oldconfig" on a new kernel
>to recover specific tweaks.
>
>Regarding backing up the portage tree, the binary packages won't do
>much if the last sync is, say, one or two months old or even worse if
>older. To use "emerge -K" one must have the same package version built
>in the binary package as the one present in portage. That's what I'm
>facing right now, it seems my binary packages won't be so helpful
>after all - I'm beginning to think I'll have to go back to stage-3...
>
>Thanks!
>Francisco
>

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