[Discuss] Moving Your Everyday System to New Hardware

[dbarrett at blazemonger.com (Daniel Barrett)]

On August 27, 2024, Rich Pieri wrote:
>My take on the process is rather mundane: I write it down. Every
>package I install and every custom change I make, I write it in text
>file which functions as a play book for deploying a functionally
>identical system regardless of the underlying hardware.

I do something similar but slightly more automated. I use git to
capture every change I make to system files. Basically, I initialize a
git repository in (say) ~/SystemChanges and create a duplicate, sparse
directory structure containing all the changed files. So if I update
/etc/apache2/foo.config, I copy it to ~/SystemChanges/etc/apache2/foo.config
and "git commit." When it comes time to migrate to a new machine, I can
recreate all needed changes to system files within a few hours. I also reap
the benefits of versioned changes to individual system files.

The only tricky bit is preserving file owners & permissions, but they
are present in the original files.

Dan