Wouldn't it be nice if emerge...

Quantumstate · Apprentice Joined: 26 May 2004 Posts: 270 Location: Dallas

Emerge is a great tool; far exceeds BSD's system. But the agony of install makes me not want to do one from scratch again, if I have a disk die.

I wish we could back up our /etc and /home, and then do an:
# emerge sysbackup /mnt/dvd/mysys
which would make a record of every distfile we've chosen to install, into a flat file.

Then when booted to livecd:
# emerge sysrestore /mnt/dvd/mysys
and it would read each distfile noted, and pull it down and install, all in one whack.

Just spitballing here.

tomthewombat · Posted: Thu Jun 10, 2004 8:15 pm Post subject:

A very appealing idea! Except, when I reinstall everything it is usually to get rid of all the 'garbage' i emerged but didn't really need. HeHe

pjp · Administrator Joined: 16 Apr 2002 Posts: 20067

Moved from Installing Gentoo.
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saccory · Posted: Fri Jun 11, 2004 7:52 am Post subject:

I think, there's no need to blow up emerge. A seperate portage-backup and portage-restore may do the job as well. Although I doubt it can replace an ordinary backup because there are so many dependencies to regard.

Genone · Posted: Fri Jun 11, 2004 8:06 am Post subject:

Just make a backup of /var/db/pkg in addition to /home and /etc, everything else can be regenerated.

supernovus · Posted: Fri Jun 11, 2004 7:07 pm Post subject:

Use the package building features, save the packages as well as the portage tree on a CD (or multiple CDs if you have a lot of packages) and then you can reinstall easily. I actually wrote a set of scripts which automates this process since one of my computers has no internet access. I installed the entire system with it, and if I want to add a bunch of new software, I can build the packages at work, run a script which builds an update-`date +%F`.tar.bz2 file, stuff it on a zip disk, go home and type:
# tap install-update /mnt/zip/update-`date +%F`.tar.bz2

Presto, I've got all the new updates.

I'm sure you can write something similar to make a backup of your system.

I may integrate the update portion of my scripts with the mainline Tap client, and offer a place to download the installer portion (used to make a mostly automated Gentoo installation CD) if anyone is interested in it.
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davidblewett · Posted: Sun Jan 30, 2005 11:34 pm Post subject:

I would appreciate looking at your work. My system has crashed a few times recently for a variety of reasons, and having an easy way to re-install would be nice.
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/dev/random · Posted: Mon Jan 31, 2005 1:11 am Post subject:

http://gentoo-wiki.com/HOWTO_Custom_Stage4