> -----Original Message----- > From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of > Matthias Kilian > Sent: Wednesday, August 17, 2005 4:18 PM > To: misc@openbsd.org > Subject: Re: The Care and Feeding of OpenBSD > > On Wed, Aug 17, 2005 at 03:25:56PM -0400, Will H. Backman wrote: > > > like, reading the dump and restore manpages? > > > > > > > Do you use dump and restore, or are you just giving and example? > > Can't speak for Henning, but I use dump(8) and restore(8) at home, > on a server I rented from Strato, and for some boxes at our customer > (the latter running linux). > > Depending on hardware and infrastructure, you can dump(8) to tape, > to a separate disk (that's not very safe, though), to a remote > machine via ssh, or to an ftp server. I do this all day from > /etc/daily.local or via a separate cronjob, and I never had any > problems, even when dumping mounted filesystems. > > IMHO, one of the neat things in dump(8) and restore(8) is that you > get an file listing really fast in contrast to backups based on > tar(1), where you have to read the *complete* archive. > > > > What about partition table backup? > > Why? If you have some files removed or destroyed by accident, you > don't need the partition table for a restore. If one of your disks > is damaged, you get a new one and have to use fdisk(8) and disklabel(8) > anyways, and the labels of all mounted disks are in /var/backups, > i.e. at least on the archive of your last full dump. > > Ciao, > Kili
I want to thank people for their input so far. Here is what I have so far: Seems like the FAQ http://www.openbsd.org/faq/faq14.html#Backup gives a good script for basic system backup and restore. As for change management, it looks like adding files to /etc/changelist might work fairly well for starters. Tracking stable seems to be a matter of unpacking the source and then keeping up to date using cron job to fetch through anoncvs. Because there might be some confusion about the need to reboot after building updates, reboot just in case. A generic plan would assume that src, XF4, and ports are all part of the picture. Packages can now be updated instead of removed and re-installed thanks to new pkg_add options, although config files might still need hand merging. Release upgrades should be done at every release through the upgrade option during the install, merge config files by hand. Special cases may require fresh install, so read the release notes first.
