[Discuss] Dropping obsolete commands (Linux Pocket Guide)

[dbarrett at blazemonger.com (Daniel Barrett)]

Thanks to everybody who has responded so far! Your comments are very helpful.
I'll respond more comprehensively later, but I wanted to address this one
first:

On November 10, 2015, Edward Ned Harvey (blu) wrote:
>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) ...

Is so much manual work actually necessary? I've personally done
several full restores with rsync to a freshly formatted disk like
this:

1. Boot on Knoppix or other "live" CD
2. rsync everything from the backup medium to the new disk (using the correct
options to preserve ownership, restore devices & symlinks, etc.)
3. Run grub

Am I missing something? The restored systems seem to run fine.

--
Dan Barrett
dbarrett at blazemonger.com