[Nix-dev] Persistent System State (Was: Disaster recovery / re-deployment) (fwd)

[roconnor at theorem.ca]

On Tue, 3 Jan 2012, Florian Friesdorf wrote:

> 
> Hi Rickard,
> 
> On Tue, 04 Oct 2011 11:45:14 +0200, "Rickard Nilsson" 
> <rickard.nilsson at telia.com> wrote:
>>> However in your case
>>> http://mawercer.de/~marc/minimal-install-archive.patch should be enough
>>> if you're lucky.
>> 
>> Thanks! I will start out from that and see where I end up.
> 
> did you made progress with that? For a full backup there might be more
> files needed, e.g.:
> /etc/wpa_supplicant.conf
> /etc/passwd
> /etc/shadow
> /etc/group
> /var/lib/wicd/*

I wonder if we could start moving towards putting all system persistant state 
into /var/lib so that is the only thing that needs to be backed up.

So we would move /etc/passwd, /etc/shadow, /etc/group into /var/lib and 
hardlink them into /etc when /etc is rebuild upon start up.

I don't really know enough about linux to know how feasible this would be.

-- 
Russell O'Connor                                      <http://r6.ca/>
``All talk about `theft,''' the general counsel of the American Graphophone
Company wrote, ``is the merest claptrap, for there exists no property in
ideas musical, literary or artistic, except as defined by statute.''