Is there a way I can save system settings and have yast revert to a config file in case I ever need to reinstall the system again? I hate having to configure the firewall, runlevels, samba shares, samba workgroup, apparmor, and all the other junk after every install. It’s not like I install often, but should suse 11.5 or 12 roll out, I’d like it to be a snappy upgrade.
Oh, happy day! a thinking person. You’ll have to keep track of all those configurations that you change.
#1 You could keep it simple like,
echo "03-30-2011 I changed samba file /etc/samba/smb.conf the share name from Document to document . . .... " >> listofchanges.txt
#2 A bit more complex but a good option is to back up your /home/userid and /etc directories to compressed backup file on another partition.
Backup process is the eye of the beholder I recommend PartImage on the Gparted LIveCD.
GParted – Live CD/USB/PXE/HD
GParted – About
#3 Even more complex hunt and peck, create a find script to locate all configuration files and hidden directories in /etc, /home/userid and backup those files and folders.
Like ~/.mozilla, ~/thuderbird, ~/.evolution, ~/.ssh, ~/.alias, ~/.bashrc, /etc. You can use tar to compress the folders.
man tar
#4 My favorite entry level version control RCS or CVS to check in and check out your changes.
RCS is the simplest to use but CVS has more in common with the professional Linux version controls of SVN and GIT.
man rcsintro
man cvs
You can do all 4. Version control really has the advantage of tracking your changes for you when you’re just changing something like the name of the directory in the smb.conf file.
You wouldn’t want to back up the partition because you changed the smb.conf or a font style on the desktop.
I keep my /home directory on it’s own partition so it will survive reinstalls (I do a lot of disto tasting so installs are pretty frequent). Before I overwrite my root partition, I copy my /etc/directory to my user’s home directory. Then it’s just a matter of knowing which files to copy back into the /etc directory afterward.
That’s the way I currently have it setup, although this doesn’t keep changes made to system wide programs, like the firewall, apparmor, an samba.
Right now I have it down to a science. I’ve hopped away from openSuSe to test crunchbang, Fedora 14, and gentoo, but always made my way back to openSuSE. I’m here to stay, but in the future I’d like these changes to be quicker. From the sounds of it, I’ll probably just write a script that I’ll keep in my dropbox account that will backup my settings and restore them for me.
For system settings a backup of /etc is allways usefull. Were it only to compare what you have now with what you had earlier. (copying it to the new system without any though might not allways be a good idea, the new version of the product may have evolved and have new/changed parameters, thus intelligent merging of old and new may be required).
Think of YaST as a bunch of programs that change the system configuration files that are there from old. You can do everything YaST does by configuring those files with an editor of your choice. But that also means that YaST does not have a centralized place nor a universal format to make configuration files. The configuration files are still those that where there long before YaST existed. And those files can thus be anywhere (well, most are in /etc) and have formats to the liking of the people who wrote that original part of the Operating System (for much this was allready before Linux even existed). Think e.g. of the local file that converts hostnames into IP addresses and vv. It is /etc/hosts and predates not only Linux, but even DNS.
Thus there is no way to be sure “you got them all”, because even when you did, tomorrow you will install/start using something new that may have it’s configuration files in a different place and in another format.
On 2011-04-02 06:36, DupermanDave wrote:
> That’s the way I currently have it setup, although this doesn’t keep
> changes made to system wide programs, like the firewall, apparmor, an
> samba.
Well, you can backup the entire /etc directory. Most of the customizations
are done in /etc/sysconfig/*, you could try saving and restoring that (and
then run “SuSEconfig”), but some programs have complex configurations
outside that directory, like samba or AA.
–
Cheers / Saludos,
Carlos E. R.
(from 11.2 x86_64 “Emerald” at Telcontar)
On Sat April 2 2011 07:20 am, Carlos E. R. wrote:
> On 2011-04-02 06:36, DupermanDave wrote:
>
>> That’s the way I currently have it setup, although this doesn’t keep
>> changes made to system wide programs, like the firewall, apparmor, an
>> samba.
>
> Well, you can backup the entire /etc directory. Most of the customizations
> are done in /etc/sysconfig/*, you could try saving and restoring that (and
> then run “SuSEconfig”), but some programs have complex configurations
> outside that directory, like samba or AA.
>
DupermanDave;
Among the other directories that you might want to backup, at least in part,
are:
/var/lib
The above contain zone files for named, Samba tdbs, dhcp lease files and other
configuration files.
/srv
The above directory if you run Apache2 and/or ftp.
P. V.
“We’re all in this together, I’m pulling for you.” Red Green