backup systems. (Use Amanda!!)

[warlord at MIT.EDU (Derek Atkins)]

Derek Martin <blu at sophic.org> writes:

> If it came from Red Hat's RPMs, it's got a SRPM.  If there's no SRPM,
> don't install it in /usr.

Not all RPMS come from Red Hat, and not all RPMS are relocatable.
I've got a bunch of RPMS that I use that do not have associated SRPMS
but are also not relocatable.  They are part of Linux-Athena, and get
updates as part of the Linux-Athena update process (along with the Red
Hat RPMS).

So, saying "don't install Linux-Athena" is a bit, um, unreasonable.
Just because there is a (correctable) bug in a file in an RPM does not
mean that you should not use that RPM..  Indeed, it means you should
be able to correct it in place (and backup the correction), until a
replacement RPM becomes available (at which point the "fix" no longer
needs to be backed up.

And frankly, if I need to restore a machine, I'm generally interested
in restoring by data, but I probably want to re-install from scratch.
What's the point in re-installing a machine only to over-write the
installation (and indeed the RPM database) from a data restore?

-derek
-- 
       Derek Atkins, SB '93 MIT EE, SM '95 MIT Media Laboratory
       Member, MIT Student Information Processing Board  (SIPB)
       URL: http://web.mit.edu/warlord/    PP-ASEL-IA     N1NWH
       warlord at MIT.EDU                        PGP key available