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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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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