Cloning, used to be: Re: deleting firefox 10.02 from kpackagekit in k10.10 mm

[ray burke]

On Wed, May 23, 2012 at 7:29 AM, Waleed Hamra <kubuntu-users at whamra.com> wrote:
> On 22/05/12 19:00, Perry wrote:
>>
>> Ray wrote:
>> [snip]
>>
>> Well, I expected some tips on this "cloning".
>> _Whiping everything clean before using the backup would surely work
>> but is quite drastic.
>> _Of c ourse you could leave untouched your personal documents,
>> photos, and so on ; it's better not to delete and restore them.
>> _I fear (not sure) that just overwriting with the backup-files may cause problems,
>> for instance if a new app uses an existing config file.
>>
>
> well it depends on what is being backed up.
> for anything under /home, cloning isn't really the best of options.
> plain old fashioned backups are easier to use, as they allow you to
> restore files, while keeping any new files you've created after the last
> backup. and generally, there's negligible harm from keeping these new files.
> but for the root partition, assuming your /home is on a different
> partition, restoring backups on top of the partition will royally mess
> up your dpkg system. this is a case for cloning. the way cloning works,
> the entire partition is, along with its structure is saved (backed up).
> and unless you're using some specialized smart cloning manager,
> restoring without wiping is impossible (and most certainly
> unrecomm-ended). you see, dpkg keeps a database of every file installed
> by every package you install, not to mention their configuration files,
> their installation states, their dependency information, etc... this is
> the very heart of debian and debian-based systems. adding files from new
> packages, without having dpkg aware of them, is a recipe to chaos.
> now in the case you are using same partition for / and /home, you have a
> bit more work. you should be using normal archive backups for your home
> directory, and storing them away, and a clone of your / (which will
> inadvertently include /home) once every while. if things get messed up,
> you recover from the clone (which will also mean your /home got
> recovered), and then restore from the newest /home backup (assuming it's
> newer than the used clone).
> personally, i never saw the need for / backups at all. the beauty of
> debian based systems is how you can perform all sorts of repairs using
> the package manager. with your system files modified only during package
> installs/upgrades/removes, it's very rare to have filesystem corruption
> resulting from power loss or a hang, and if that happens, reinstalling
> the package with corrupt files resolves the problem. if a package causes
> conflicts or problems, it's as simple as removing it to fix the system.
> if a particular version is problematic, pinning the package works, etc..
> etc..
> i hope this was helpful :)
>
> --
> Waleed K. Hamra
> Manager of Hamra Information Systems
>
>
>
>
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>
Waleed K. Hamra
> Manager of Hamra Information Systems
>
when I clone my k10.10mm the whole 80gb sata disc which becomes a
direct copy, using
HDClone 4.1, so I dont have to worry about clonning/restoring different folders,
and if I have a problem with anything like firefox 10.10.2 crashing
all the time when I
downloaded thru kpackagekit in my k10.10mm, I just clone of my backup
drive(exact copy of
before I installed the update and go back to using firefox 9.02, so my
clonning is exact copy
of all my disc that holds my k10.10mm(80gb) and backup k10.10mm(80gb,
clonned 1 week ago)? hope you understand waleed.

ray