The following are the steps I take update Debian by making a fresh install on a clean drive.

Create a drive. There’s plenty around to explain this step if you’re not sure.

Format and mount the drive.

mkfs.ext4 /dev/sdb1 #enter your drive here
mount /dev/sdb1 /mnt

Install deboostrap and bootstrap the system using your arch and preferred distrobution. Mount proc and dev.

debootstrap --arch amd64 testing /mnt http://ftp.us.debian.org/debian
mount -t proc none /mnt/proc
mount -o bind /dev /mnt/dev

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Say you run a server of some kind at home and you don’t have a static IP (who wants to pay the extra cash?), and you need the IP to update after your router restarts. It’s simple with afraid.org and a bash script run by the cron system.

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It’s finally here! A beta version for the Webmin Nginx Module has been released. I’ve posted it here for everyone to download.

Hopefully someone will find it useful. It’s obviously in need of some more work, but it’s a start and I believe fills a hole in the current webmin module situation.

I would also be nice to get ideas for other features people may wish to see in the future.

I know some people are excited about the nginx webmin module I’m working on. I’d just like to give a quick update about the status of the module. I can’t say when the first release will happen, or how well it’ll work on systems other than Debian at this point, but I’m loosely hoping for the end of this week. Maybe June 11. 2010. You can view the project page here: nginx module.

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This is a nice way to make a backup of your root and home filesystems – at least this is how I get it done. Before you read on, I’ll say that the home files are on a different mounted drive than the root files. These are also LVM2 drives.

First I check the drive that will get the final partimage files. Then I mount the spare drive to be used by partimage. This allows me to never unmount the root and home filesystems. Then I unmount the spare drive and check it. Next I make the partimage copy or delete the tmp file if it fails. Last I delete images older than 25 days and unmount. This allows me to keep four backup versions – one for today and three previous images.

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