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#1 2011-09-02 07:18:32

dcbdbis
Member
From: Aurora, Colorado
Registered: 2004-09-10
Posts: 247

[SOLVED] Seeking advice/experiences on a reload of Arch from scratch

Good Evening Arch Community,

I've got a lot of data (work related) across 5TB of storage. Arch x86_64 is my only OS.

I've transitioned through the new new tools, the new kernel, and the new kernel package naming conventions, etc. I'm current, well was 5 minutes ago :-)

I just finished a major project today, and am between projects. I suspect I have a lot of excessive baggage on my system from older init scripts, etc. ifconfig being but one example, instead of the more current ip addr show <devicename>.

I use ext4 exclusively. OpenBox w/LXDE is my WM of choice. I boot to the command line by choice. I've got a lot of my own custom scripts I use regularly too.

I have VM'd the new install images and they seem to work fine in grub and syslinux incarnations. My son though, has had grub issues on ext4 for which I don't see in the bug logs.

I've got about a week before I need to be back up and ready for my next project. My work is not at risk. I have triple redundant backups spread across three separate medias.

Does anyone have any experiences, warnings, advice, or problematic workarounds on taking my system down, and then reloading it from scratch with the new installation images? Be that a netinstall (my personal preference) or conventional media install?


I'd rather consult the community before I take such a broad-brush swipe of my system and benefit from collective wisdom, lest I revisit any issues that may be awaiting me in the new iso's that others could steer me around.


Input is requested and invited. Anything from a "Good to go" to a  "good to go but watch out for..........."


Please accept my gratitude and appreciation to the volunteers who put together the new ISO's......I mean no disrespect by seeking experiences/guidance on this rewipe. I seek experience and gotchas that an older guy (like me) may not think of on in essence, a fresh install.

I will be adding a new system disk. It will be an SSD. All rotating media will now be strictly backup.

To the question of "Why?".....About twice a year I take my system down and reload it in it's entirety. Tech changes, packages change, my selections change, etc. Please consider it a maintenance thing. And no, my system is currently performing very well.



Sincerely and respectfully,


Dave

Last edited by dcbdbis (2011-09-02 19:52:43)

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#2 2011-09-02 08:00:46

oboedad55
Member
From: Baku
Registered: 2011-04-05
Posts: 392

Re: [SOLVED] Seeking advice/experiences on a reload of Arch from scratch

I have installed with the latest install images and they work fine. I had an experiment with btrfs that I will not rerun until there is an fsck utility. My system froze and I had to do a hard reboot which trashed the filesystem. So it's back to ext4, which has been rock solid, and has fsck.  BTW, I've had no issues with grub and ext4. So I'd say, go for it and have fun.


Registered Linux user #436067

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#3 2011-09-02 08:07:33

dcbdbis
Member
From: Aurora, Colorado
Registered: 2004-09-10
Posts: 247

Re: [SOLVED] Seeking advice/experiences on a reload of Arch from scratch

Thank You oboedad55.

It's always nice to know before I do one of these maintenance sessions.


Regards,


Dave

Obodad55........I just gotta ask. I am a classically trained clarinetist. Last performance I did was Gustaf Holst's the planets for the then,. NBC today show.  You have a son/daughter playing a woodwind?

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#4 2011-09-02 08:45:38

.:B:.
Forum Fellow
Registered: 2006-11-26
Posts: 5,819
Website

Re: [SOLVED] Seeking advice/experiences on a reload of Arch from scratch

You can always use an ext2 /boot, although the kinks with ext4 should vae been ironed out by now (there were issues with it in the beginning).


Got Leenucks? :: Arch: Power in simplicity :: Get Counted! Registered Linux User #392717 :: Blog thingy

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#5 2011-09-02 09:39:16

tomk
Forum Fellow
From: Ireland
Registered: 2004-07-21
Posts: 9,839

Re: [SOLVED] Seeking advice/experiences on a reload of Arch from scratch

Why do you want to reinstall? It's totally unnecessary IMO.

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#6 2011-09-02 16:46:08

oboedad55
Member
From: Baku
Registered: 2011-04-05
Posts: 392

Re: [SOLVED] Seeking advice/experiences on a reload of Arch from scratch

dcbdbis wrote:

Thank You oboedad55.

It's always nice to know before I do one of these maintenance sessions.


Regards,


Dave

Obodad55........I just gotta ask. I am a classically trained clarinetist. Last performance I did was Gustaf Holst's the planets for the then,. NBC today show.  You have a son/daughter playing a woodwind?

No, I am the musician, played principal oboe in three major orchestras before retirement.


Registered Linux user #436067

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#7 2011-09-02 20:25:54

dcbdbis
Member
From: Aurora, Colorado
Registered: 2004-09-10
Posts: 247

Re: [SOLVED] Seeking advice/experiences on a reload of Arch from scratch

Hello All, and thank you for the responses.

To tomk, it has been my experience that fundamental changes, like the new package naming conventions, initscripts, etc. Can cause my system to behave strangely. And yes, I intelligently merge pacnew files when they appear. Depreciating the tcp_wrappers support, new netcfg, have all brought with them their own oddities. I'm not saying that it's broken. It isn't broken. I continue to operate daily. I'm saying that there is credible evidence on my system of "leftovers". Certainly not enough to file bug reports and send people chasing after little tiny things.

Right now I have two "failed" entries on bootup that were not there before. They appeared after kernel packaging changed and the latest init scripts. They are bogus fails. The bootup screen indicates that my swap partition does not get mounted, yet a df shows this otherwise.  Also, these 'fails' do not appear in any of my logs. Both 'fails' are not correct. Manually checking them shows that their failed condition is an incorrect report of failure.

It has just been my experience when major fundamental changes, paradigms shifts in Arch are implemented, I have always found that a reload squares things away.

And the other reason is (begins confessional), is that with my backup scheme, it is less time consuming to reload than chase these little gremlins down. So, honestly,  there's an element of laziness to it. A a reload is my maintenance plan when fundamental paradigm shifts happen, and I begin to have evidence of 'leftovers' in the system.

Others may not experience these anomalies. I do. And it's not a big deal to me.

Arch gives me freedom of choice, and a lot less hassle than Gentoo.

FYI.


Thanks again to all who responded!


Sincerely,

Dave.

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#8 2011-09-04 04:28:04

dcbdbis
Member
From: Aurora, Colorado
Registered: 2004-09-10
Posts: 247

Re: [SOLVED] Seeking advice/experiences on a reload of Arch from scratch

And the reload went perfect!

Thanks to all who responded!



Dave.....

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