Production server running from USB stilck with /var on HD

[suvayu ali]

Hi Phil,

On Tue, Jul 10, 2012 at 2:39 PM, Philip Rhoades <phil at pricom.com.au> wrote:
> The bit you snipped from the top of the mail explained it - I want a quick
> way of swapping in a new OS without having to mess around with the HDs in
> the box.
>

I don't quite follow why there would be a need to mess with HDDs to
upgrade an OS. If you partition it right, you should be able to deploy
your upgraded OS in your system partition with ease without interfering
with your data.

Or are you looking for a way to rollback to the last version if the
upgrade doesn't workout? In that case you can try snapshots. I believe
LVM has a very stable and functional snapshot feature (confesion: I
haven't used it myself).

You could also try a filesystem that supports snapshots. Unfortunately
the one that comes to mind at the moment (BTRFS) is experimental;
definitely not recommended for a production server. You could also go
for hot swappable disks as your system partition. AFAIK most rack
mounted servers support this feature, but I could be wrong.

And then of course there is the virtualisation route, but my
understanding of that is rather minimal.

> Phil.

Hope this helps

PS: If I'm misunderstanding your needs, please disregard my comments. :)

-- 
Suvayu

Open source is the future. It sets us free.