pre-upgrade backup

[Giles Orr]

On 26 May 2010 07:36, Matt Price <moptop99-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org> wrote:
> Normally when I upgrade a laptop or something, I back up my data &
> just go full steam ahead.  But I'm thinking about upgrading our family
> media centre from ubuntu karmic to lucid, and i'm worried there will
> be glitches -- the current setup is a bit finicky already, but the
> reason i'd upgrade is that some of the stuff is broken anyway (e.g.,
> our remote doesn't work at all anymore) and i believe certain issues
> have been addressed in the stock kernels & libraries in the last 6
> months or so.
>
>
> Anyway, since the whole family uses this computer, I'm anxious about a
> failed upgrade, and am wondering if anyone out there uses a version
> control system or something that would let one roll back an upgrade if
> it's severely broken.  For instance, I'm thinking I could put /etc
> under git or something, and use dpkg --get-selections to get a list of
> packages?  And if the things go badly wrong, I could just roll back
> /etc/ and reinstall everything from the karmic repos or something.
> /home is unfortunately not on a separate partition but all our video
> files are, so most of our media should be relatively safe.
>
> anyway, i'd appreciate hearing any thoughts.  thanks!

Consider cloning the OS partition onto another HD.  Once you've done
that, take out the current HD, replace it with the clone, and
establish that it's bootable.  I'd feel pretty comfortable about
upgrading then.

Of course I have stacks of 20/40/80GiB HDs around my apartment and am
assuming the same for you, and I'm reading your message to say you
don't need to back up the media data so the small HD would work ...

Hope this helps.

-- 
Giles
http://www.gilesorr.com/
gilesorr-Re5JQEeQqe8AvxtiuMwx3w at public.gmane.org
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