Re: Disk image? and other general questions

On the fine day of Mon, 04 Oct 2004 21:50:00 -0400
Jean-Sébastien Guay <jean_seb@xxxxxxxxxxxx> said very eloquently:

> I have an Alpha XL currently running Debian. I would like to see how 
> Gentoo works on it, but I would especially like to have the option to 
> back out and go back to my running system if it doesn't work (or I
> don't like it, though I doubt that frankly). 

You can do a drive image as someone else already commented. What works
really well for me is to use an extra partition or hard drive for the
secondary OS that you are trying out. That way you never are overwriting
your main OS so you don't have to worry about losing it.  And you can
jump back to your normal configuration by just booting into that
partition instead. 

I always try and remember when partioning a disk to leave an empty 3-4
gig partition for this purpose. It really comes in handy.

Also if you do things this way it's also possible to install gentoo from
the other OS (using chroot), so you always have access to the web, etc.
while you are building the gentoo system. Then your main system
is not down for any long length of time. There's some documentation
about this on gentoo's site; I believe it's in the"alternative
installation howto".

I just went through this with rebuilding my Alpha gentoo installation.
If you want any more details let me know.

> Also, somewhat unrelated -- How does Gentoo handle configuration
> files? 

There's an app that let's you interactively merge the changes. It's not
fancy (it's just text based) but it sounds  more flexible than
what you are talking about with debian. 

AZ-- 

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