[Aptitude-devel] What I'm really missing in aptitude / synaptic

[Daniel Burrows]

On Tue, Aug 28, 2007 at 07:09:06AM +0200, MNO <manostienen at gmail.com> was heard to say:
> I really hope that aptitude will have it as an option in it's menu to export
> and import the selections.
> 
> At least i now learned how to do this with dpkg which is very helpful right
> now.
> 
> for the config files i'll just save all .conf, .ini etc.

  Saving and loading the selection list might be useful, and I think it
would be doable without too much trouble.

> What i try to do is following:
> 
> Export the selections for a pre configured machines, like this:
> - HP Vectra 420 Office,
> - Compaq iPaq internet kiosk
> - HP EVO File server

  OK, so you're talking about systemwide restores.  I was a little
worried you wanted to restore user configuration files (~/.*), which
is quite a bit trickier (unless, again, you blindly back up and
restore everything).

  If you really are recreating /etc entirely, I would recommend taking
a serious look at just making a tarfile of everything in there, then
blowing it away after a reinstall and unpacking the archive.

> I'm helping someone who is running a low budget Internet cafe in Africa.
> Harddrive failure is one of the most common issues, and backups are the
> second issue.
> 
> So if i can store at least the selections on a web server and have an easy
> way to apply them to a fresh install then i'm half way ready.

  It sounds like you probably don't have much disk space for this -- but
if you do, you might want to look at partimage.  AIUI it's designed for
this sort of thing (and will save bandwidth on restores).

  Daniel