Subject: Re: Running -current.
To: Richard Rauch <rkr@olib.org>
From: leam <leam@reuel.net>
List: current-users
Date: 05/20/2003 20:01:51
Richard Rauch wrote:
> Thanks for your perspective, especially on the "build.sh
> distribution" time.
>
> I recently got around to setting up an NFS server with home
> directories on it, so only /etc, maybe some /root, and a couple of
> tweaked files in /usr/src have anything of real importance in them.
>
> But if disaster strikes, I wasn't sure how best to recover. (E.g.,
> if one day trying to build -current kills the system.) I know that
> it is a more likely danger (as compared with a release), and still
> recall the recent debacle about the filesystem changes causing (or
> failing to fix?) corruption. If that kind of thing is rare enough, I
> can always just wipe the disk and go back to a snapshot + CVS +
> build.sh to get back to where I was. But if the need to restore from
> backup while running -current is frequent enough, maybe some way of
> building my own snapshots (and stashing them on the NFS server) is a
> good idea to allow quicker recovery. How hard is that?
If the break happens to be your NIC driver, it could be pretty bad. :)
The snapshot issue is that you'd have multiple snapshots. Just do a base
load, have your configs in a tar file, and consider all the /usr/src
stuff based in anoncvs.
> What did you mean by a "dual hard disk machine" being broke under
> 1.6? Do you really mean that two hard disks do not work (at all?)? I
> have an old 20GB drive in my main system, but the 20GB drive is
> normally not mounted. (It's a Maxtor that has problems with seek
> performances. I intended to do something like a nighly, or weekly,
> mount of the disk and copy backup archives to the Maxtor. It should
> be fast enough for that, though it is miserably slow for certain
> operations. That's another story though (see netbsd-users or -help,
> I think, going a ways back in the archives). The replacement is a
> Western Digital 40GB. I haven't had them both active at the same
> time for very long, but am *pretty* sure that I've had them both up,
> under 1.6.
Sparcs can boot from either disk. So I have both laid out exactly the
same and a script that uses (ufs)dump to copy everything off the other
disk. It even sets the bootblock and edits fstab. Before I do major work
I run the script. If the -current breaks anything I can't fix, I just
boot from the other drive and run the script back the other way to wipe
the mess and start over.
However, dump was broken a while back, and I started playing with tar.
tar is probably better, but my skill with it is less.
My idea for you may be to copy the partition as a tar file. If you then
boot from cd and rebuild the machine, you can then just put back the
files you need and update from CVS for new sources.
I think, but can't give the exact syntax, that you can build a tarfile
include list that would save just the files you need. You could then
untar it in / and be set.
If I were on a single disk machine I'd make sure I had a 1.6.1 cd and a
disk layout page handy. That way if it dies I could just rebuild with a
known good setup, then ftp in my tar files.
> Thanks again.
You don't know how thankful *I* am for the people on this list who've
helped me.
> P.S.: Please include me in the To: line of replies. Otherwise I only
> see the message when and if I click on the link on
> mail-index.netbsd.org.
Sorry. No problem.
ciao!
leam