[Discuss] Dropping obsolete commands (Linux Pocket Guide)

[smallm at SDF.ORG (Mike Small)]

On Tue, Nov 10, 2015 at 12:06:03PM +0000, Edward Ned Harvey (blu) wrote:
> > I've never used them in my 17 year Linux usage.
> 
> I'm surprised to hear so many people saying they've never used dump & restore. If you backup using rsync/rsnapshot/tar/whatever, you're able to restore a system by reinstalling the OS manually, and reinstalling the same package list manually, and reconfiguring everything manually (or restoring /etc and hoping no package versions have changed anything meaningful) ... It's absolutely possible, but it's a pain.

This seems like another of those things where the target audience
matters. If you're responsible for a bunch of machines at a company
then planning on reinstalling might be stupid (unless the installs
are completely automated, which they probably are, I dunno, I'm
not a sys admin) but if you're a home user and hobbiest with one or two
machines maybe not, unless you're practicing for the prior role.
At least my thinking is 1. to do something to make the worst
case less bad but I don't care that much and tar and rsync are
familiar and don't suggest single user mode, 2. in the rare event
of a hard drive crash it will be a good time to start fresh, sweep
away the cruft that's gathered, maybe even try a new distro or
operating system and 3.  installing is pretty easy and I'm curious
how the system's installer has changed since 10 years ago.

-- 
Mike Small
smallm at sdf.org