:: Re: [DNG] usrmerge
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Author: Didier Kryn
Date:  
To: tito
CC: dng
New-Topics: [DNG] Reinstalling Windows (WAS: usrmerge
Subject: Re: [DNG] usrmerge
Le 25/08/2025 à 21:44, tito a écrit :
> On Mon, 25 Aug 2025 17:22:29 +0200
> Didier Kryn<kryn@???> wrote:
>
>> Le 23/08/2025 à 14:42, Simon via Dng a écrit :
>>>> The time when one could loose data because of filesystem failure is gone,
>>> Really ? Did I miss the news that reality has given in to wishful thinking ? Yes, I know things are a lot more reliable than they used to be (my memory goes back to Ext2 without journalling, and other systems) but nothing is infallible.
>>     I never experienced a filesystem failure since the advent of the
>> first journaling filesystem, Reiserfs. 20y ago or even more. Compared to
>> other accidents, this is therefore negligible. And, anyway, loosing one
>> partition, eg /var, would leave the package manager in a very dirty state.
> Unless you have a list of installed packages made with:
>
> dpkg --get-selections
>
> and you can reinstall everything so that the system is in a coherent
> state again. Running debsums afterwards helps to see if you missed
> some package still in a corrupt state.


    Good to know. Thanks. I just installed debsums. Anyway my /var
isn't a mount point on any host.

    It is true that some subdirs of /var are writen very often, by
contrast with the majority of the OS. This is the case for /var/log, of
course, and you can loose /var/log without serious damage. I'd rather
put only /var/log on a separate disk.

    On a laptop with only one disk, having /home on a separate
partition just helps avoid errors if you need to re-install the system.
Which matters most is to back it up.

>>>> and, when the OS is badly broken, it may be easier to re-install than to repair it.
> I love linux because almost every time you can repair your system,
> reinstalling is so windooze-like.


    First I bet that this isn't the only reason why you love Linux (~:
. Second, I beg to disagree: I didn't install Windoze for at least 30y,
but I don't remember it was anyway as easy as Linux is nowadays. The
thing which is Windoze-like is to reboot every time you change something
to the system.

    And, you can also connect your disk to another Linux host and back
up your home and some config files before re-installing.

    Ciao.

--     Didier