a question about a personal Arch product

Shadowmeph · 2008-05-30 17:03:30

I am wondering if it is possible that once I arrive at a satisfactory finished ( or at least closed to finished) Arch is it possible to burn this to a disk so that if I ever want to totally reinstall this all I would have to do is through the disk into the cd trayand it would install everything that was on it. let me try to explain this a little better with Windows you can use nlite or vlite ( depending on whish version you have) what you do is just add or take away things you want or don't want them burn them to disk so when you ( because it is microsoft) have to do a reinstall you just use the disk you made.

Last edited by Shadowmeph (2008-05-30 21:05:06)

Stythys · 2008-05-30 17:09:08

what I do is just keep backups of my /home directory. That way if I ever need to reinstall. I just copy my entire /home directory over to the new install, and all my settings and preferences are preserved. Pretty much the only thing you need to do is re-download all the packages, which should only take an hour or two, depending on your net connection. You can also use the command `pacman -Qet > packages.txt` to output a list of all the top-level packages you've installed on your computer.

Last edited by Stythys (2008-05-30 17:09:44)

Shadowmeph · 2008-05-30 17:24:56

when I do the pacman -Qet > packages.txt command where does the list go?

ghostHack · 2008-05-30 17:30:37

It goes to a file called packages.txt in the current directory

bender02 · 2008-05-30 17:38:50

You can do a partition image (eg with partimage), or you can use larch to "livify" your installation (creates a live cd from your current installation).

Shadowmeph · 2008-05-30 18:47:03

bender02 wrote:

You can do a partition image (eg with partimage), or you can use larch to "livify" your installation (creates a live cd from your current installation).

so if I were to use larch it would make a disk that I could use to reinstall the system without having to download , install and setup everything again?

Stythys · 2008-05-30 19:05:22

yeah but if you use one of those partition copying tools, to keep an up-to-date copy you have to recopy the whole thing over all the time. If you just keep a backup of your /home folder with rsync or something, I think it's easier. And it doesn't really require a whole lot of re-setting up, because all you settings are preserved. You just need to redownload your packages, which you can get with pacman -Qet as I mentioned above. And yeah, if you want to see the output in the terminal, just do a standard pacman -Qet, but if you appened the '> packages.txt' it'll output it into a file in the current directory, which I like. I've even taken my top-level packages and created a simple command called 'initial-install' in my .bashrc. I reglarly update it whenever I install new packages, so if I ever need to reinstall, all I need to do is type 'initial-install' and it'll redownload everything I need, and I'll be back up and running very quickly.

Shadowmeph · 2008-05-30 19:16:25

thats cool I think it will take me a little while to understand "how to" do this but I am going to try

Stythys · 2008-05-30 19:48:02

well if you have any questions just ask here

or you can always PM me if you need to. My AIM/MSN is in my forum profile, and I'll also be in the #archlinux IRC channel.

Last edited by Stythys (2008-05-30 19:48:28)

Shadowmeph · 2008-05-30 21:03:24

thank I will do that

dunc · 2008-05-30 21:15:48

Stythys wrote:

Pretty much the only thing you need to do is re-download all the packages, which should only take an hour or two, depending on your net connection.

Depending on the size of your installation, you could do pacman -Sc (to clean out uninstalled packages) then burn the contents of /var/cache/pacman/pkg to CD/DVD and save a lot of downloading.

Stythys · 2008-05-30 21:36:44

dunc wrote:

Stythys wrote:
Pretty much the only thing you need to do is re-download all the packages, which should only take an hour or two, depending on your net connection.
Depending on the size of your installation, you could do pacman -Sc (to clean out uninstalled packages) then burn the contents of /var/cache/pacman/pkg to CD/DVD and save a lot of downloading.

ooo smart...I never thought of that =P

dyscoria · 2008-05-30 21:52:25

Don't only make a backup of /home but also /etc. Configuration files galore in this folder that would also be very useful to keep a hold of.

peets · 2008-05-30 21:53:48

This has been discussed not too long ago: http://bbs.archlinux.org/viewtopic.php?id=48814. You might find some good ideas there too!

Arch Linux

#1 2008-05-30 17:03:30

a question about a personal Arch product

#2 2008-05-30 17:09:08

Re: a question about a personal Arch product

#3 2008-05-30 17:24:56

Re: a question about a personal Arch product

#4 2008-05-30 17:30:37

Re: a question about a personal Arch product

#5 2008-05-30 17:38:50

Re: a question about a personal Arch product

#6 2008-05-30 18:47:03

Re: a question about a personal Arch product

#7 2008-05-30 19:05:22

Re: a question about a personal Arch product

#8 2008-05-30 19:16:25

Re: a question about a personal Arch product

#9 2008-05-30 19:48:02

Re: a question about a personal Arch product

#10 2008-05-30 21:03:24

Re: a question about a personal Arch product

#11 2008-05-30 21:15:48

Re: a question about a personal Arch product

#12 2008-05-30 21:36:44

Re: a question about a personal Arch product

#13 2008-05-30 21:52:25

Re: a question about a personal Arch product

#14 2008-05-30 21:53:48

Re: a question about a personal Arch product

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