thinhla Posted July 13, 2005 Report Share Posted July 13, 2005 It's wise and safe pratice to document everything you install, modify to system file. And back-up all the files you rpm onto difffernt partition thus saving you a lot of time later on when your system goes ballooning up. When I install a package or compile something from source. I document every procedure, what's first and what's next, and every notes associated with installtion. Then I save/backup everything onto different partition which is a FAT32 share partition between windows and linux. Just in case, I want to reinstalled Mandrake, I go back and repeat exactly what I have successfully done before without having going online searching for solutions. :-) Cheers Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jboy Posted July 13, 2005 Report Share Posted July 13, 2005 (edited) This kind of advice just saved my butt. Just two days ago, I had drive problems including partition table corruption and lost the root filesystem of my LE2005 install. Fortunately, I had backed it up a couple days before that. I had to low-level format the drive and then was able to re-partition it, and was back up quickly. The /home file system was on a second drive, so that was ok. I had not saved the partition table to diskette with the dd command, so I'll be doing that from now on. Fortunately, I also had a boot CD so I could boot directly back in and then reset up lilo. Since, as you advocate, I had a log completely documenting everything I had done on that LE2005 install, I was able to quickly redo the few configuration/update actions that had been taken between the backup and the crash. A completely documented log of all system actions taken is something I've learned over-and-over again is invaluable. Had Windows XP also on the drive, had not backed it up, and lost much of it (I was able to copy off some data files). So that will have to be installed from scratch. Thanks. Great advice! This mandrivausers forum is a terrific asset. Edited July 13, 2005 by jboy Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
iphitus Posted July 13, 2005 Report Share Posted July 13, 2005 Or if you document nothing, you learn it because you do it multiple times. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
thinhla Posted July 13, 2005 Author Report Share Posted July 13, 2005 Or if you document nothing, you learn it because you do it multiple times. <{POST_SNAPBACK}> You still do it couple of times if you document things. It's just that you don't have to go back online searching for solutions Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pierre04 Posted August 21, 2005 Report Share Posted August 21, 2005 Being a member of the "multiple installs" I can say that it has helped me learn more bout the way things work... In other fields they refer to this as "spaced repetion learing"... (grin) I do "cheat" and suppliment with documentation. Now if I could just get really good at backup and restoration processes with Linux I would be waaaay ahead of my curve. Good thread, very valid topic. Critical component - TEST YOUR RESTORES of your DOCUMENTATION!!! Installing the OS is no big deal... it's addressing all the customization that matters... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jboy Posted August 21, 2005 Report Share Posted August 21, 2005 Good thread, very valid topic. Critical component - TEST YOUR RESTORES of your DOCUMENTATION!!! Installing the OS is no big deal... it's addressing all the customization that matters... <{POST_SNAPBACK}> Since this thread is about keeping a system log and documenting your customizations for future reference/rescue, I'd like to cross-reference this related post: https://mandrivausers.org/index.php?showtop...ndpost&p=201459 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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