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From: Neil Ellwood on 3 Oct 2009 07:39
On Fri, 02 Oct 2009 12:29:10 +0000, Martin Gregorie wrote:

> IME Fedora upgrades have been dog slow and a proportion of them don't
> work properly, so I always do a clean install now, but there are ways to
> make that easy:
Over a few years I have tried a number of distros and have found that is
the only reliable way.
>
> 1) Make sure /home is in a separate partition which is never
> reformatted.
>
> 2) if you have anything in /usr/local, move the whole structure to
> /home/local and replace it with a symlink - $PATH doesn't know the
> difference. After a fresh install, "rm -rf /usr/local" and replace it
> with the symlink to /home/local.
I limit my partitions nowadays to / swap usr var and home to minimise as
many problems as possible.
>
> 3) If you run Sun Java, do exactly the same with /usr/java as you did
> with /usr/local and make sure your own and 3rd party JAR files are
> somewhere in /home
>
> 4) every time you hand modify a file in /etc, put a copy somewhere
> in /home. These can be checked in case the associated package has
> grown extra parameters and dropped back into /etc after a clean
> install.
This is not just good advice but also essential IMO.
>
> 5) Keep a list of all non-standard packages you installed and where
> they came from. If this list takes the form of a script kept
> somewhere in /home even better: just run it after the clean install
> to add the additional repositories into yum and pick up the packages.
>
> 6) The first trick after the clean install is to fire up the User/Group
> maintenance applet and put all your login users back with the exact
> same uid and gid as they had previously.
Not needed in my case as I am selfish and do not let anyone else use my
comp.






--
Neil
Reverse 'r and a' Delete 'l'
From: Folderol on 3 Oct 2009 08:05
On Sat, 03 Oct 2009 06:39:19 -0500
Neil Ellwood <cral.elllwood(a)btinternet.com> wrote:

> On Fri, 02 Oct 2009 12:29:10 +0000, Martin Gregorie wrote:
>
> > IME Fedora upgrades have been dog slow and a proportion of them don't
> > work properly, so I always do a clean install now, but there are ways to
> > make that easy:
> Over a few years I have tried a number of distros and have found that is
> the only reliable way.
> >
> > 1) Make sure /home is in a separate partition which is never
> > reformatted.
> >
> > 2) if you have anything in /usr/local, move the whole structure to
> > /home/local and replace it with a symlink - $PATH doesn't know the
> > difference. After a fresh install, "rm -rf /usr/local" and replace it
> > with the symlink to /home/local.
> I limit my partitions nowadays to / swap usr var and home to minimise as
> many problems as possible.
> >
> > 3) If you run Sun Java, do exactly the same with /usr/java as you did
> > with /usr/local and make sure your own and 3rd party JAR files are
> > somewhere in /home
> >
> > 4) every time you hand modify a file in /etc, put a copy somewhere
> > in /home. These can be checked in case the associated package has
> > grown extra parameters and dropped back into /etc after a clean
> > install.
> This is not just good advice but also essential IMO.
> >
> > 5) Keep a list of all non-standard packages you installed and where
> > they came from. If this list takes the form of a script kept
> > somewhere in /home even better: just run it after the clean install
> > to add the additional repositories into yum and pick up the packages.
> >
> > 6) The first trick after the clean install is to fire up the User/Group
> > maintenance applet and put all your login users back with the exact
> > same uid and gid as they had previously.
> Not needed in my case as I am selfish and do not let anyone else use my
> comp.

As an additional backup I keep a (printed) crib sheet with step-by step
instructions on the steps I took to build my preferred setup. It's
amazing the details you forget :(

--
Will J G
From: Martin Gregorie on 3 Oct 2009 10:07
On Sat, 03 Oct 2009 06:39:19 -0500, Neil Ellwood wrote:

> On Fri, 02 Oct 2009 12:29:10 +0000, Martin Gregorie wrote:
>
>> 6) The first trick after the clean install is to fire up the User/Group
>> maintenance applet and put all your login users back with the exact
>> same uid and gid as they had previously.
> Not needed in my case as I am selfish and do not let anyone else use my
> comp.
>
Same here, but I find it convenient to use different logins for different
tasks - Boinc, development, personal word processing, business stuff,
pages for my in-house web server, etc all have different logins, but of
course ymmv.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |
From: Martin Gregorie on 3 Oct 2009 10:10
On Sat, 03 Oct 2009 13:05:03 +0100, Folderol wrote:

>
> As an additional backup I keep a (printed) crib sheet with step-by step
> instructions on the steps I took to build my preferred setup. It's
> amazing the details you forget :(
>
Thats a page in my in-house web server. I duplicate those pages to my
laptop from time to time, both as out-of-house reference and as an
emergency info source, e.g. if the home server's disk dies.


--
martin@ | Martin Gregorie
gregorie. | Essex, UK
org |
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