On Wed, 21 Mar 2018 18:00:02 +0000, Ahem A Rivet's Shot wrote:

> On Wed, 21 Mar 2018 16:11:08 +0000 (UTC)
> Martin Gregorie  wrote:
>
>> On Wed, 21 Mar 2018 13:57:35 +0000, Adam Funk wrote:
>>
>> > Well, you also have to identify & update any customized config files.
>> > I keep a list of the /etc files that I've modified, but I can't swear
>> > I haven't missed any out.
>> >
>> Even better, why not keep copies of the modified files? I do that and
>> keep them in the same place as my additional packages list.
>
>  I install git, create an empty repo in / and commit all config
> changes to it. I also clone all such repos to a store on my SAN and use
> a cron job to do a regular git pull on all of the clones. Works pretty
> well across multiple unixish platforms.

I keep my config file copies, along with everything else (package lists)
that will need reinstatement after a clean Linux install, under version
control - CVS rather than git at present.

It all got a good workout about a year ago when did disks in both my
laptop and my house server died almost simultaneously. Both ended up
needing to be recovered by clean installs on the new disks, followed by:
- pull the content of /home back from my rsynced backups
- reinstate groups, usernames, passwords by running the backed-up script
- run the backed-up script that retrieves missing packages
- replace config files from the copies in /home/user/configdir
- make sure everything is up and running

=====
One point that those who suggested that the Raspbian installed packages
list by running an apt utility or scraping the apt history log may have
missed: your additional packages will available after a clean install or
if your SD card gets corrupted.

So, to avoid losing this the packages list , you need to recreate it each
time you install another package and make sure that the updated package
list gets included in your regular backups.


--
Martin    | martin at
Gregorie  | gregorie dot org

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