Want ability to restore from failed upgrade.

[Steve Phillips]

On Wed, 23 Feb 2005, Chris W. Parker wrote:
>
> So you're saying if I tar the entire fs (minus /proc) I can somehow copy
> it back? How do I do that? I don't understand how that would work unless
> I were doing it remotely and not having booted the computer normally.

there are a number of ways..

* install a base os (minimal install) and then unzip over the top of it
* boot to a rescue cd and then untar it over a blank drive
* have a spare hard drive in the machine, mount this, preform the copy and 
then dismount it, install grub on the second drive. on failure, swap 
jumpers
* Other stuff

(and before anyone mentions mirroring would be a good way to do number 3, 
this was dating back before the days of being able to boot off a mirror 
using the md suite, infact, you had to manually patch your kernel to give 
it RAID support)

> Here's why I'm confused. With image files don't you have to boot into a
> special "operating system" that will allow you to overwrite all the
> files that would normally be in use? (This is how it works for Windows
> at least [I think].)
>

Sometimes, yes, tho the techniques i mentioned above have always seemed to 
work for me *shrug*

-- 
Steve.