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Bug#198602: ITP: debbackup -- Backup and restore Debian specifics (package status, conffiles)



Hi Marc!

On Sun, Jun 29, 2003 at 10:43:14PM +0200, Marc Haber wrote:
> What you are proposing is a great idea that deserves careful planning.
> 
> Let me ramble on for a minute.
> 
> The backup script should probably call up a list of packages on the
> system, build from these list a list of files installed from packages.
> These files should be excluded from the Backup. It should also back up
> the partition table of the hard disk, and information about which file
> systems are in use.

Doing actual backup is completely out of the scope of what I had planned
- there are fantastic backup tools already. The debbackup script itself
will only generate a tarball needed by debrestore - no more, no less. If
you want to work on an Amanda interface, or a dedicated backup program,
that's fine, but debrestore itself will continue to have a single,
dedicated task, for setups where most data is shared (e.g. /home), or
where perfectly good backup regimens already exist.

> The data generated this way could be written to CD images, or there
> could be an amanda interface that lets only the files that are not
> replaceable from a Debian mirror end up in the amanda archive.

debbackup-yyyymmddhhmm.tar.bz2 can already be written to a CD image.

> Restore procedure would boot from a CD (a dedicated recovery CD or the
> first CD of an image set created by debbackup).

Yeah, a custom ISO has already been proposed - I think that's a
fantastic idea.

> Next steps would be:
> - optionally restore hard disk partitioning
> - file system creation
> - mount file systems in a chroot
> - Use debootstrap to install a base system with working apt
> - dpkg --set-selections with the packet list backed up
> - apt-get -f install to install Packages and files
> - Restore of locally changed files and other data from the backup
>   medium (using the CD images or amrecover).
> 
> I would like to work with you on that package. I really appreciate
> your project and will certainly take a serious look into it when I get
> back online.

I'll put up some sources when they're ready for consumption.

Unfortunately, it's my understanding that 'guests' can't actually create
Alioth projects, so I can't create it - I don't think I can ever
actually commit it! I might be able to get a publically-accessible
Subversion repository up, however.

-- 
Daniel Stone                                     <dstone@trinity.unimelb.edu.au>
Developer, Trinity College, University of Melbourne

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