Something like this ought to be quite possible but I'm not sure if it exists.
I'm using an Ubuntu Server install (11.04)
1. Make a note of the base install (eg ubuntu-server) and version, from which
a fresh install could be done on new hardware
2. Create a list of all packages installed/uninstalled relative to that base
(by name, not version, assume that a re-install would be applied to current
versions of the same packages).
3. Backup all configuration files which were created by the above but have
been changed from the distro installed versions, ideally as diffs against the
original files.
4. Backup all files which are not part of the distro install (ie as defined by
the above), with a list of exclusions (to avoid backing up log files, for
example).
Does anything like this exist? It seems to me that it should be fairly
straightforward (but my knowledge of the relevant packing tools isn't very
good so I might be wrong). In principle it would be quite easy from this to
backup (say) an 11.04 server and restore to an 11.10 install, and have
something which would probably be pretty close to working. As an additional
step, say 3a, it would be nice to do intelligent backups of certain files (eg
proper database dumps to SQL) which could then be excluded from step 4.
Aside from the above, does anyone have a good recommendation for efficiently
backing up an existing server via SSH without pulling all the base install
stuff but without missing anything?
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