[Gloucs] Never ask me to admin your server!

[Paul Broadhead]

Hi all,

the list is quiet so I thought I'd share my latest blunder.

A few months ago, I setup my server to use debian stable.  I had almost
got everything working.  Two missing items were cvs and the system side
backup (user files are OK); I bet you know what's coming.

I got fed up with cvs so decided to start again from scratch and delete
the repository in /var/lib/cvs; I logged in as root and typed rm -rf
/var/lib, yes /var/lib!  Oops, there goes my entire /var/lib directory
tree, not just the cvs directory.  No backup yet, Bum!

My desktop is also running debian (testing) so I though I'd see what I
had lost. Oh dear, that's where apt keeps it's list of installed
packages.  A quick look round and it appears there's no way to recover
from this without a complete reinstall.  

So I started the reinstall.  Of course I didn't make any notes the first
time so I was going to have to remember all those little extras I found
I wanted.  I could copy most of the configuration from the old install
so I made a complete backup of everything I had left.  That's when I
discovered that I had never purged my apt cache since the original
install.  Here by share luck was a complete copy of all the packages I
had ever installed, all the updates too.  Once the basic install was
complete, I copied the old cache files into place so I didn't even have
to download them again:)

I think its all up and running again so I'll setup that system backup
script now.....

Regards,
Paul