[clug] what is best way to migrate a whole computer's content to another?

[Andrew Janke]

On 9 March 2012 10:59, Nemo Maelstrom Thorx <clug at nemo.house.cx> wrote:
> "a few years" is putting it mildly. I had dotfile cruft going back over
> a decade. Interestingly, I started a relatively clean $HOME wipe around
> newyear, and have been blogging about it
>
> http://blog.thorx.net/2011/12/but-that-was-my-home/

:), There's nothing quite so cleansing as a good disk failure.

Fighting dotfile cruft changed the day I decided to use defaults as
much as possible. Since then I have often learnt there are better ways
to do the things I normally scratch my own itch for. The original
writers of software put a decent amount of thought into such things so
at least I give it a try first.

I symlink "good" dotfiles to one place that is backed up, my current
list is this:

   $ ls -a /data/home/rotor/00-work/dotfiles/
   .   .bash_profile  .cvsrc	.gnome2      .inputrc	  .pvconv   .vim
.Xresources
   ..  .config	   .dir_colors	.indent.pro  .perltidyrc  sigs.xml  .vimrc

I am also constantly trying to reduce this list, the biggest offender
is .gnome2 and .config. I also try to do all the customisation I can
via a single script, it currently consists of this:

#!/bin/sh

# install suff
apt-get install \
   openssh-server autofs nfs-kernel-server openntpd vim octave3.2 \
   sysstat mmv xxdiff inkscape netcdf-bin syslinux snarf moreutils bc
ddd gnuplot \
   gparted gpw imagemagick indent libtool nedit nmap perl-doc pwgen
qalculate-gtk \
   rdoc antiword ruby traceroute keychain synergy dcmtk geany htop

apt-get install \
   automake autoconf automake autoconf cvs flex cmake \
   dpkg-dev libtool g++ cvs indent subversion subversion-tools

apt-get install \
   vim openssh-server htop gpgv moreutils mmv nmap perl-doc cvs subversion \
   inkscape geany gimp vlc gparted dirvish xxdiff octave3.2 autoconf automake \
   pdftk traceroute libtool pwgen gxine gscan2pdf synergy
nautilus-open-terminal \
   indent ooo-thumbnailer geany-plugin-addons geany-plugin-doc
geany-plugin-gdb \
   geany-plugin-latex geany-plugin-lipsum geany-plugin-lua geany-plugin-prj \
   geany-plugin-sendmail geany-plugin-shiftcolumn geany-plugin-spellcheck \
   geany-plugin-vc geany-plugins geany-plugins-common

# fix window button positions and focus
gconftool-2 -s /apps/metacity/general/button_layout --type=string
menu:minimize,maximize,close
gconftool-2 -s /apps/metacity/general/focus_mode --type=string sloppy
gconftool-2 -s /apps/metacity/general/action_double_click_titlebar
--type=string toggle_shade


Seems to work for me.  It's another story for doing system
customisation in /etc (cfengine2) but that's a tad beyond what's being
described here.


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