On Fri, Jul 22, 2016 at 11:04:23AM -0500, Richard Owlett wrote: > I have a laptop set aside for experimenting with Debian installs. > I've not yet defined my personal "optimal" install. > My nominally base install will be a reasonably standard CLI plus a > personally preferred default set of utilities. > > That base install *SHALL BE* on a read-only partition (e.g. sda5). > I wish to "almost clone" it to sda5, (e.g. sda6, sda7, sda8). > The above "almost" refers to whatever is required to run Debian as installed > to that *explicit* partition. > I will make various install/configuration choices to the "almost cloned" > partitions. > My then current "optimal" install will then be placed on either sda5 or sda > 6 as I consider appropriate. > > Does that make sense?
I can think of two ways of doing this. One involves VMs, which you said you don't like. The other involves ZFS. Install ZFS-on-Linux, use it as your root. Snapshot the root. Clone it X times. Change the clones. -dsr-
