Backups and Bitrot
xd1.dev
xd1.dev
I also take a snapshot of my installed-packages-list, and a snapshot of my /etc and /local directories.
Those are the main ingredients of my automated daily backup. Using that information, I can reinstall and rebuild my system to where it was at backup-time last night. I haven't timed that recently, but I'd estimate that the rebuild would take between one and one-and-a-half hours from a completely crashed boot/root/main hard drive.
But I am thinking about giving nix a try. It's supposed to solve many of those problems without having to resort to batch jobs.
Hourly? Hmm. That's not a bad idea at all.
Quite often I will change something only to wish I had a better way of backtracking the installed packages quickly, instead of rummaging about in the install logs.
Thinks: how about an hourly pkglist daily in a week-long circular-queue? A script and a cronjob could knock that on the head in a very short time. Or maybe a watch on the install-log and you'd only produce a pkglist if there's actually been any change.