On 11/07/10 11:12 PM, Bob Proulx wrote: > H. S. wrote: >> I want to reinstall Debian on a machine which is also running my local >> web server. I am planning on backing up /home, /var and /etc. > > Backups are good. But... > > Re-install? Why? Is the machine running now? If so then why not > simply upgrade it? Please tell us more! Sometimes people come to > Debian from other distros where upgrades do not work and so they think > that they need to install from scratch to move forward. But in Debian > upgrades do work and have for almost forever. Really!
I want to use LVM in that machine. I have used Debian for some hears and I fully understand your point regarding upgrades. > > Overwriting /var with an old copy will cause trouble. I am sure that > you have some need in mind. Why do you want to do this? What is > there that you want to restore? If something like /var/www then you > can safely restore just /var/www okay. But otherwise just overwriting > /var from a different and older system will definitely break a lot of > system functionality. For example dpkg keeps its brain there. I am going to exclude /var/cache/apt, or even /var/cache. I have never restored /var before so I am still looking for information. /var/www is the most important one to restore. As you wrote, it looks to be quite a simple to copy over www from the older one and than install and start apache on the new installation. > > You will probably have some trouble with /etc too. Because the new I know, that is why I am not restoring /etc. I will keep it only for config records that I do not want to go hunting around on google after I reinstall. > system will have newer syntax in various files the /etc and again, > overwriting those with the older systems versions will cause trouble. > You could go through your systems one by one and use the old files as > a template and re-edit the new files into shape using the old ones as > reference. That is about the best way to do it if you really want to > move the functionality onto the new system from an older one. Yes, I agree, and that is what I usually do. > >> Regarding apache, I suppose I just copy the /var/log/apache to the new >> system before starting apache? > > System logs would be okay to move forward. But note that you would > lose the information that happened during the installation if you move > /var/log/dpkg.log forward. But logs are informational only so nothing > will break if those are lost. Apt and dpkg logs are not that important, so no problem there. > >> Any further tips are much appreciated. > > Upgrade. Don't re-install. :-) I would, if there were an easy way to manage my current partition scheme with LVM. Is there? Thanks, regards. -- Please reply to this list only. I read this list on its corresponding newsgroup on gmane.org. Replies sent to my email address are just filtered to a folder in my mailbox and get periodically deleted without ever having been read. -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to debian-user-requ...@lists.debian.org with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact listmas...@lists.debian.org Archive: http://lists.debian.org/i1fceb$tc...@dough.gmane.org
