Suggestions on how to 'reset' system to fresh state

[rjs]

Hey guys, hope this is the right forum (isn't really a support question, really just looking for people's opinions).

I am about to start hosting a Subversion server for a small project team at my University. I will also be running Apache with Mediawiki.

This computer has been my desktop machine for about a year and a half without reinstallation of Gentoo, so as you can imagine it has become fairly cluttered with stuff (config files lying around, KDE is installed but I never use it anymore, loads of different users and groups exist that are never used).

Now, I would really like to start fiddling around with Apache, Subversion and so on, from a fresh state. I don't know if it just me, but I like the feeling of having a fresh installation, and slowly adding just what I need to get the job done, knowing exactly what I've added, what config files have changed and so on. With my computer in its current state, I feel like installing Apache and so on will just add to the clutter.

One option would be to wipe the hard drive (obviously backing up important stuff) and reinstalling from scratch - not much fun. What I was hoping to do was to compile a list of all the programs I need, then get rid of everything else. Delete everything from /etc/ that I don't need, hopefully get rid of all the libraries that are never used, and so on.

How can I do this?

Is there a way to get a list of all the software I have emerged, pick out what I want, and unmerge the rest (including all dependencies that aren't needed anymore)? I read about --depclean and other such options, but I've never quite grasped to what extent such things can damage the system. If needs be I could unmerge everything and start again that way.

I would also like to get rid of all the users and groups that aren't used for anything - would this just be a case of going through /etc/passwd and /etc/group and getting rid of things I don't want? Is there a way to reset the users/groups to the way it was when Gentoo is first installed.

Anyway, enough of this. I want to get some sleep before I do something rash like reformat.

Any thoughts?

Robbie

[omp]

I'm not really good with Gentoo, but this is the help I can offer:

Look in your world file ( /var/lib/portage/world ) to see a list of packages you have emerged yourself. After unmerging what you don't want, run emerge --depclean (you should probably check to see what it is removing before doing it) to get rid of all the dependancies not being used anymore. (just make sure nothing important is getting unmerged).

That's all I know. Hopefully someone else can give you more information on what to do.

I personally suggest reinstalling.
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meow.

[L41n]

My best Gentoo refresh procedure is:

1. Check /etc/make.conf and add/remove USE Flags for add/remove functionality support in any future compiled source and change your CFLAGS, CXXFLAGS and LDFLAGS if you want.
2. Check /var/lib/portage/world and remove unwanted programs. Be careful with packages like glibc.
3. Run emerge --depclean -v to remove unwanted packages and dependences. (Magic ^^)
4. emerge --sync && glsa-check -f new (if you have gentoolkit installed) && emerge -uDva --newuse world

5. Emerge your liberty
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Emerge your liberty.

[BlackEdder]

If you want to restart with fresh config files for users etc you can also do a

[Enlight]

https://forums.gentoo.org/viewtopic-t-399446.html may please you.