On Wed, 29 Jan 2003 07:40, Pigeon wrote: > On Wed, Jan 29, 2003 at 12:47:38AM +1100, bob parker wrote: > > On Tue, 28 Jan 2003 10:22, Pigeon wrote: > > > Couple of suggestions: > > > - might be an idea to save /var as well > > > - if you're into kernel customising, make sure you have a rescue > > > kernel with built-in support for all your critical hardware (ie, not > > > as modules). I NEARLY got caught without a kernel that would recognise > > > my Initio 9100UW SCSI card, but managed to find one. (Phew!) > > > > > > Pigeon > > > > Thanks for the support. Re /var, I just did a du -h on it and mine comes > > out at 1.1 gig! Any thoughts on what is essential and what is not? > > Well, I saved the whole thing precisely because I wasn't sure what is > essential and what is not... There's a lot of stuff there about > apt/dpkg configuration, most of which will be rebuilt when you > reinstall packages, but you might need some of it if your system has a > complex mix of packages from different sources/branches. All I > specifically needed were /var/spool/mail/pigeon and > /var/spool/exim/input/*. > > Depending on how frequently you make backups, /var/log/* might have > useful stuff that might help you determine why you needed the backup. > > My /var is only 63Mb; I guess I'm not the sort of user to commemt on > what might be essential when it's grown to 1.1 gig. > > Still, 1.1 gig should compress down to less than 700Mb, so it'll all > go on one CD. > > (Related thought: Must make statically-linked rescue versions of tar, > gzip, bzip2, fileutils...) > > Pigeon
You motivated me to have a good look at /var. The mail spooler is no problem because I have kmail leaching it continually so it gets caught in the backup of $USER. var/log and htdig account for about 1/4 gig each and there are about a gazillion or so news items. I think prudence might warrant saving the newer logs at least. The rest is welcome to dissappear if it must. The installed packages are at least listed in a file in $USER so they are quite restorable from the install discs. How much bother that would be I do not know. I'd love to be able to sort the installed package list by cd so I'd have the minimum no of media changes on a reinstall. I'm presently downloading Knoppix, I expect that it would do double duty as a rescue disc. Thanks Bob -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
