Starting from scratch?

Ari'osika · 2010-08-29 23:19:58

Peasantoid wrote:

Has anyone here ever scrapped a working Arch install in favor of a new, 'clean' one? I know I've made some pretty piss-poor choices during this installation's lifetime, ones it would take a very long time to hunt down and rectify. Anyone else ever felt the need to reinstall?

Yep sure do, I do this because after 2 to 3 months; my system usually resembles a kind of software-frankenstein that's better off dead and rebuilt.

(I usuallly do this because my linux partition is where all my coding and developments occur and as such random errors/issues occur/compound on themselves which would probably lead to the death of the system anyways).

synthead · 2010-09-27 00:48:30

If you want to "reinstall" your system, all you need to do is remove your configuration files in ~/.* and /etc, although you'll be bothered that you did later.

Installs are fun, though

mhertz · 2010-09-28 10:24:57

Yes, I reinstall pretty often, and even though I know that it's not needed, as I can always just uninstall unwanted apps and change/remove configs etc, then I just cannot help it, as im just extremelly pedantic about having a completelly clean system without useless stuff lying around.

So whenever i'm making some changes like e.g. switching to another WM, browser or music-player etc., then I make the needed changes to my arch setup shell script, and then I pop in my usb-stick which I have setup to automatically partition, format and install and setup a base-system(hail AIF!) completelly without any user-input, and then I run my arch setup shell script, which then install all packages I need and sets them up, and makes user-settings and adds users, passwords etc etc.

Cyrusm · 2010-09-28 13:01:11

I've done a couple full re-installs in the past, and in retrospect they were for simple things that I probably should have just fixed. reinstalling sometimes sounds like the easy way out, but I've learned over time that it's frequently easier, a lot more educational, and a lot more fun hunting down and fixing any problems. Arch Linux is like a Bonzai tree, it takes a little work trimming things here and there to get it the way you want, but over a long period of time you create something beautiful.

Mr. Swillis · 2010-10-03 16:14:46

Yeah, I do this occassionally. With Arch it not really necessary unless you've gotten to the point where you've reconfigured your necessary working setup (ie. installed desktop apps) enough times that you've forgotten everything you've installed and removing the individual packages isn't easy. Also, many times there are dependency issues that arise with meta packages when trying to remove them.

I ran into this when yanking Xfce in favor of Pekwm. I still wanted a couple of apps that the xfce4 meta package depends on (ie. thunar and terminal), so a "pacman -Rcs xfce4" had to be followed up with a "pacman -S thunar terminal." This is trivial example, mind you, but based on this I can see how things might get out of control with larger meta packages.

What I do is keep a detailed text document for each desktop setup that lists all of the apps I want in that configuration in one big pacman command. Each document also contains snippets that I saved from the Beginner Guide back when I installed Arch for the first time. This includes things like setting up rc.conf, user privelages, and xorg. Now, I can wipe the whole system and get it up and running quickly.

Oh! And a great tip here for doing this. If you haven't purged your /var/cache/pacman/pkg directory, save this to an external source. After you do a clean install, copy the contents to /var/chache/pacman/pkg on the new install and then you don't have to wait for anything to download (assuming nothing's been updated since your save). This makes the re-install extremely quick if you've documented your steps well.

I'm actually working on a quick install guide for *my* Pekwm+light GTK apps setup that I'll be posting soon, so you can see an example of this. Just need to determine the best place to post it...

- Swill

machinecrusade · 2010-10-23 07:34:57

i do a little "windowsish rollback"... i use clone zilla to restore from an image. its a fresh install (all set up perfect) with kde and some themes and stuff. then a little

pacman -Syu && pacman -Sc --noconfirm

wait a while and... ...Arch Beast, blood pentagram, etc...

Last edited by machinecrusade (2011-03-03 01:22:10)

Arch Linux

#26 2010-08-29 23:19:58

Re: Starting from scratch?

#27 2010-09-27 00:48:30

Re: Starting from scratch?

#28 2010-09-28 10:24:57

Re: Starting from scratch?

#29 2010-09-28 13:01:11

Re: Starting from scratch?

#30 2010-10-03 16:14:46

Re: Starting from scratch?

#31 2010-10-23 07:34:57

Re: Starting from scratch?

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