Clean Reinstall + Install Packages and Previous Configs as a Way of Backup/Restore Process

[adw]

@deeplow

Instead, I opted to reinstall all the software I had there. To do this I used commands like dnf history (on fedora templates) to see what else I had installed. There should be a similar one for debian.

Then I also looked at the file .bash_history to see the commands I had run on the template to recall any other changes. Since they are templates, I didn’t to a lot there so it was relatively simple.

FWIW, this is also why the longstanding advice has been to keep a text file with notes about any customizations you make to your templates (e.g., non-default packages installed) so that you can more easily reapply them in the future. This is the low-tech, old school approach, whereas Salt is the high-tech, new-fangled approach.