system restore for ubuntu -- few ideas.

John Conover conover at rahul.net
Wed May 18 18:17:56 UTC 2005


Robert Jameson writes:
> I was thinking today about the possibility to make it so users can
> restore back to a previous state -- this could be done using some
> tracking information in dpkg and apt-get & synaptic.
>

Probably everyone has their own way, but I personally don't like
backing up to the same HD-the HD is the most failure prone device in a
PC, (less than 5 years MTBF under "normal" desktop usage, according to
most HD manufactures,) and the backups are lost, too, if the disk
crashes. The PS is the next most failure prone device, (manufacturers
claim a 5 year MTBF of 24/7 usage at 27C,) and if the PS fails, it
will frequently take the HD with it.

So, an alternative is to use an inexpensive PC as the backup, (no
monitor/KBD, windows, etc.,) and rsync(1) data to it across the
network, maybe with revision control so a system can be restored to a
given state/date. http://www.coda.cs.cmu.edu/ does this
auto'magically.

If the SW distribution is from a live CD/install CD, then the system
data does not have to be backed up, of course. Only the configuration
data, (about a dozen small files,) has to be backed up, plus what
folks add and their home directories. I personally remaster the
install CD the way I want it-as a standard for all the machines I
run-and maintain a floppy of the configuration files for each
individual machine, so any machine can be brought up from a cold HD in
about 10 minutes; then rsync(1) all the other stuff from the backup
machine for user's directories, etc., for a complete restore.

One of the advantages of Linux/Ubuntu/Knoppix.

Its a disaster recovery technique that has worked well for me over the
years, YMMV.


       John

-- 

John Conover, conover at rahul.net, http://www.johncon.com/




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