From owner-freebsd-chat Sat Apr 14 15:32:16 2001 Delivered-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Received: from phoenix.welearn.com.au (unknown [139.130.44.81]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 8B79137B42C for ; Sat, 14 Apr 2001 15:32:02 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from sue@phoenix.welearn.com.au) Received: (from sue@localhost) by phoenix.welearn.com.au (8.9.3/8.9.3) id IAA83970 for freebsd-chat@freebsd.org; Sun, 15 Apr 2001 08:39:01 +1000 (EST) (envelope-from sue) Date: Sun, 15 Apr 2001 08:38:57 +1000 From: Sue Blake To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org Subject: saving configs [was: MUA's seen in the lists] Message-ID: <20010415083855.Y4964@welearn.com.au> Mail-Followup-To: freebsd-chat@freebsd.org References: Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii X-Mailer: Mutt 0.95.4i In-Reply-To: ; from Joseph Mallett on Sat, Apr 14, 2001 at 04:42:23PM -0400 Sender: owner-freebsd-chat@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk X-Loop: FreeBSD.org On Sat, Apr 14, 2001 at 04:42:23PM -0400, Joseph Mallett wrote: > > Imagine having to do this to back up configuration: > find / -name '*.conf' -exec cp {} /backup/ ';' > And then imagine restoring everything to its proper home. > And then imagine all the files you missed because application X decided it > didn't want to name its files with .conf, X11 comes to mind. That'd be pretty futile. I run a script from cron that archives all of the important config files, plus a few reports and a listing of the contents of those archives showing the original paths. This can run daily 12 hours from backup time, or occasionally for a static home machine. It is NOT a substitute for backing up, but a more quickly accessed copy of the files for a quick restore if one of them gets hosed. (Ever had a server down while someone farts around with a tape to restore a 2k file? Broke your fstab or password file at 5pm, or lost today's new virtual domains setups? Discovered that the assistants haven't been using RCS like they promised?) It's a wonderful resource if you ever want to build the whole machine from scratch, e.g. on new hardware with a very different version of FreeBSD plus a good dose of hindsight. You know that all the info you need is in there, except the actual data -- no searching or head-scratching required. These archives fit onto one floppy disk (two for the slow 386 where I want the current built kernel as well). I use zip and put them on DOS-formatted floppies, so that individual files can be extracted, viewed, printed, copied to another floppy, from almost any old Macintosh, OS/2, VMS, Unix, DOS, or even MS-Widows machine. For a simple setup you can just copy the files and still fit them all on a floppy. They are easy to transport off site (a quick scp to somewhere secure, or mail two disks in a regular envelope) and are so easy to make you'll have enough not to worry about unreliability of the media. Store one diskette every month or two for a compact history of the machine's configs. I'm surprised that others don't do something similar. -- Regards, -*Sue*- To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-chat" in the body of the message