How to backup distfiles for reinstall ?

k0OA1 · n00b Joined: 15 Jul 2014 Posts: 13

Hi

I have to reinstall Gentoo because I made some changes and I'm puzzling over how to reverse what I did.

I have a directory of portage distfiles I want to use on the new system to avoid re-downloading and I read here that I can just copy them into the new directory and run 'emerge -u world'.

For the new install I'd like to try the Hardened version, and if I do, will 'emerge --ask hardened-sources' work to restore distfiles from the previous install ? or is there a better way to do this ? or any advice for instructions ??

I would prefer not to reinstall everything restored to the distfiles directory, instead be able to do a fresh install and have any required sources ready to go. Is this possible ?

Thanks for reading, and for any help,

Al

NeddySeagoon · Posted: Sun Aug 10, 2014 9:39 pm Post subject:

k0OA1,

Save /usr/portage/distfiles to a USB drive. While you are at it, save /home too.
You can usefully save /etc as a reference for your new install but not to reuse it.

hardened-sources is only part a hardened system. You need a hardened toolchain too.
Its all provided by the hardened stage3.

I'm not sure if hardened-sources is the gentoo-sources plus a patch or a whole new kernel.
Most of /usr/portage/distfiles is common to every platform that Gentoo runs on, so much of it will be reused.

To run emerge -u world on the new install you also need to move your existing world file over.
Its at /var/lib/portage/world
_________________
Regards,

NeddySeagoon

Computer users fall into two groups:-
those that do backups
those that have never had a hard drive fail.

The Doctor · Moderator Joined: 27 Jul 2010 Posts: 2678

Hu · Moderator Joined: 06 Mar 2007 Posts: 21635

When last I looked, the hardened-sources ebuild fetched of the vanilla sources tarball, the genpatches tarball that converts vanilla sources into gentoo sources, and the hardened sources tarball that contains a patch to apply the grsecurity changes.

Cyker · Veteran Joined: 15 Jun 2006 Posts: 1746

You can quite easily copy /usr/portage/distfiles over as mentioned above as this is still nice and simple

Note however that this WILL NOT copy your portage configuration across, only the source files. This means you will save a crap-ton of time not having to re-download all of them but you will STILL have to manually emerge needed packages.

You can, as Neddy says, copy the world file over, but if I was you I'd use that as a guide for manually emerging things. I can almost guarantee you that if you just copy the world file over and tell it to rebuild from that, you'll have an awesome tangle of blockers and failures and other fun to deal with.

If your dead system was relatively young and clean, you can risk it, but if it is quite old and/or has a lot of stuff installed, then don't - There is a high probability it will require more time to untangle everything than if you had just done it by hand!

Also, install demerge and use it to snapshot things as you go; It is a fantastic tool for undoing botched emerges (e.g. when testing out different DEs that install 900 bazillion packages, and then deciding you don't like that DE - It is so much safer to undo that using demerge than using --depclean, and so much faster than carefully removing it by hand!)

Out of curiosity, what did you do that broke the system so badly that you feel you need to rebuild it from scratch?!

k0OA1 · n00b Joined: 15 Jul 2014 Posts: 13

Thanks everyone, I'm back up and running !!

I restored the distfiles from previous install over to the new one and Portage was able to use those packages no probs.