usability: fedora's killer app? Clean-Install Assistant...

Jeff Spaleta jspaleta at gmail.com
Thu Aug 31 18:47:56 UTC 2006


On 8/31/06, Morgan Read <mstuff at read.org.nz> wrote:
> Of course fedora is somewhat more sophisticated than MacOS 8.1, but the
> principle's the same.  Basically, what I have to do at least every 6mths is:
> - List my packages
easily done.. and in fact a nightly list of packages is generated by a
cronscript
/var/log/rpmpkgs  by the associated cronjob.

> - List all changes to /home/me/

changes in /home/ could not be tracked since pretty much everything
down in /home/ is non-default and its not even regarded as system
information. You would need to backup all of /home/, no need to try to
track changes inside /home when all of /home is considered a
customization.

> - List all changes to /etc/
Isn't this accomplished by parsing all of rpm -V and looking for files
in /etc/ ?

> - back up /home/me/ and /etc/

backup to where and how?  backing up a user's space while outside of
an enterprise network is still a huge problem with no reasonably
accessible in-distro solution. Go back into the fedora archives and
read up on previous discussions concerning the pybackpack Summer of
Code project and the discussion on what an accessible in-distro backup
facility needs to taste line.

We need to solve the problem of providing a generally useful and
accessible backup facility that can handle removable media, local
harddrive, and network backup targets whenever a backup is requested
before we attempt to automate backups strictly for fresh-install
preparations. The issue of backups is much larger than
pre-fresh-reinstall, and if you are only backing up /home to prep for
a fresh install of a new Fedora release then I hope Fedora starts
doing monthly releases to encourage people to backup their personal
data atleast monthly.

> - Clean install

> - List my new packages and yum the diff
> - Go through my lists of /home/me/ and /etc/ and move-reconfig from the backups

Easily said... not easily done if there is system configuration syntax
changes which requires hand editting.  Didn't we just see this sort of
thing happen in fc5 with the internal changes in apache's modules?

> - Then muck around for the next month or so fine tuning all the stuff that I
> don't know about and never will that naturally gets customised through use
> - By which time it's time to go through the whole process again! (not quite:)
>
> So, what a blessing it would be to have a wizard that by a few clicks of a mouse
> stepped you effortlessly and comprehensively through that pita I've just listed
> above.

rpmpkg log already exists
rpm -V  can tell you what configs have been customized
rpm -qf can be used to see if files in /etc/ are unknown to rpm and
thus may need to be backed up.

writing a simple script to parse these isn't a big deal.... in fact
this is the sort of thing perl is only good for.

The big gaping hole in the set of technology needed for your wizard is
a comprehensive and accessible backup technology that is easily
configured and can handle whatever media a home system has access to
for backing up hundreds of gigs of personal data.  While I didn't have
a chance to reiterate this as my #1 wishlist item for fc6, I take that
opportunity now.  The biggest missing piece of desktop user oriented
technology in Fedora Core is in my opinion a robust and accessible
backup/restore tool.

-jef




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