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RE: using cvs to contol system files


From: Greg A. Woods
Subject: RE: using cvs to contol system files
Date: Fri, 25 Oct 2002 16:19:00 -0400 (EDT)

[ On Friday, October 25, 2002 at 08:52:29 (-0700), Ray Tayek wrote: ]
> Subject: RE: using cvs to contol system files
>
> yes (i'm used to rcs). but what happens (let's say) if you crash a disk and 
> have to reload the system. do you have some tool that extracts all the rcs 
> directories from a backup or something like that?

Well, first off you should have good off-line backups, right?  :-)

If you have to re-install then you should be able to just extract the
RCS files from your backups and "co" them.  "locate" should tell you
where they all are in case you have multiple config directories (I keep
everything in /etc myself) -- you might have to extract the locate
database from backups first, obviously.

Secondly if you're running a modern *BSD (and maybe other systems) then
you'll also have online backup copies of them all in /var/backups, which
of course you should have on a different spindle, right (provided you
keep /etc/changelist up-to-date)?  (In NetBSD those /var/backups files
can now even be automatically RCS'ed for daily revision tracking, just
without any accountability obviously.)

> how about keeping versions of executables and scripts?

Don't you keep install media with the originals on it?

> or suppose you download and install the latest version of your favorite 
> software and find that it just doesn't work. how about some way to 
> automagically roll back to a previous version?

There are zillions of ways to do this.  Which is best depends on your
circumstances and how you manage your software and so on.

On *BSD I just keep binary packages for all versions I've installed and
then I just pkg_delete the one that doesn't work and pkg_add the most
recent one that did.  The pkg tools don't generally disturb local
configuration files and so there you only have to deal with whatever
forward and backward compatability issues you'd have to deal with
anyway.

For "manually" installed stuff you do the same, but by hand and from
source.  I.e. "make uninstall" (or manually clean out the files) and
then unpack and rebuild and re-install the old version again.

Eric's suggestion of using 'stow' could help a lot too if you've got to
be able to do roll-backs in a big hurry for 24x7 production environments.
(I just really don't like masses of symlinks -- I'd rather have a "real"
package manager.... :-)

-- 
                                                                Greg A. Woods

+1 416 218-0098;            <address@hidden>;           <address@hidden>
Planix, Inc. <address@hidden>; VE3TCP; Secrets of the Weird <address@hidden>




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