Want ability to restore from failed upgrade.

[McDougall, Marshall (FSH)]

I would suggest that you need to get a handle on some of the basics first.
I would look at the output of the mount command to see how the filesystem is
laid out.  Also look at /etc/fstab.  Execute df to see how much disk is
used.  From / run "du -hs" to get a summary of total disk used.  Read up on
fdisk.  If you have scsi disks, run "fdisk /dev/sda" and then "p" to print
the current partition table, then q to quit.  Things like tar can be your
friend as well.  Some apps will install everything under one directory.
Sometimes a backup is as simple as tarring that one folder, and if
necessary, restore it from your tar file.
What OS are you running?  What is your current backup strategy?  What apps
are you looking to upgrade?  As Jason said, plan your work and work your
plan, but you really need to understand the underpinnings before you start
moving stuff around.  Good Luck.

Regards, Marshall

-----Original Message-----
From: Chris W. Parker [mailto:cparker at swatgear.com] 
Sent: Wednesday, February 23, 2005 2:30 PM
To: General Red Hat Linux discussion list
Subject: RE: Want ability to restore from failed upgrade.


Jason Dixon <mailto:jason at dixongroup.net>
    on Wednesday, February 23, 2005 12:05 PM said:

> Stop right there.  Yes, you should have backups.  But don't rely on
> those solely as your backup in case of upgrade failure.  Your focus
> should be on building a test system and performing the upgrade there.
> Document and test everything.  Then proceed with your production
> system upgrade, referring to your documentation and, in the worst case
> scenario, restoring from the backups.

Yes great idea!

But this would require that I have another computer available with an
exact copy of my current filesystem on the live server would it not? And
that's what I don't know how to do. If I could configure an identical
system to what I've got running live that would be awesome because then
as you pointed out I could test everything and take notes and then just
restore if something went wrong and start over.

But I don't know how to make a copy of an fs nor do I know if this is
even necessary for a test system. I'd think that would it be only
because if I built a new system from scratch, using the same versions of
software that is on my live server, it would *still* be configured
different than my live server (i.e. configuration file changes long
forgotten about that would not be present on the test system).

What angle should I come at this from?



Thanks!
Chris.

-- 
redhat-list mailing list
unsubscribe mailto:redhat-list-request at redhat.com?subject=unsubscribe
https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list