Fwd: HomeUserBackup Feature Specification

[John Nilsson]

On Sun, 2005-12-04 at 09:55 +0100, Sivan Green wrote:
> On 01:19, Sun 04 Dec 05, John Nilsson wrote:
> > What I'm looking for in a backup solution is a way to
> > export/import data
> > from and to different systems.
> > Migrating gconf settings from breezy to dapper f.ex. would
> > let me see
> > changes in system defaults so that I can minimize my
> > personal
> > customizations (reducing strange bugs by keeping close to
> > the herd is my
> > rationale)
> >
> 
> Basically, when you backup your home directory, you get
> exactly that. After a possible recovery of the base system
> has been made, restoring from your home backup should
> "reapply" all previous settings and gconf settings you had.
> As those settings are usually stored as an xml configuration
> files under you home dir, merely copying them back there by
> the backup process should suffice.

Actually this is what I don't want. But when I think of it I realize
that it's not a feature the backup system should have. Rather it's
something that gconf should do. Something like dispatch-conf in Gentoo
but for personal settings.

The thing is that I tend to combine restoring or doing backups with
cleaning out cruft. I also try to only backup that which I have actually
touched. Which most of the time is such a frustrating endeavor that I
end up with no backup at all. It's probably my habits that needs to
change rather than the system ;-)

I tried once to do some scripts to compare the list of files to backup
with what is listed in /var/lib/dpkg/info/*.md5sums but it seems that
not all files is listed there. Shouldn't this be a requirement? Even
better a signed version of the same files, then it could be used for
security checks.

Regards,
John