Over the last few days I have been heavily experimenting with recompiling kernels, installing drivers, and various other messy acts. I have probably reinstalled a fresh copy of slackware 10 25-30 times in the last 2 days alone. I was wondering, is there a more convenient way to experiment than having to reinstall freshly every time something goes wrong? Would I be able to, for example, use part of my hard drive to back up my data, and then if something goes wrong just completely restore the rest of my hard drive back to its origional state? I am assuming this would be alot more convenient than going through a 30 minute installation dozens of times a day.

EDIT: Ive also got another question - right now on my laptop Ive got a fresh install of slackware 10. Im going to be getting a new wireless card in a few days since my current one doesnt work. I figure that if I use my laptop in the meantime, I will just end up having to reinstall several times while I try to get my wireless card working, so I have decided Im not even going to bother trying to get it set up. Instead, though, I was wondering if there was a way I could even just store my X settings or something, and even if I need to completely reinstall, I could just restore my X settings. Im not sure how I would do something like this, however. Would I just backup and restore my /etc directory? Or is there more to it?

Could you put, like, 15 partitions in your computer and have a couple of OS's on it? Maybe 6 Slack10s and then destroy them one at a time :) Sounds yummy.

Haha, thats an idea... I could put 15 2gig partitions on my laptop and knock them off 1 by 1 as I screw them up. It sounds very fun, but unfortunately not very practical.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...13#post1151813


;)



Cheers,
Tink

I'm a newb and I re/compile kernels OFTEN!!! In the begining I reinstalled OS' almost with every compile, but after reading the kernel comile guide (under the slackware forum) I learned how to have more than the last kernel option available. The guide is here:

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...threadid=49035

And the instructions I'm refering to are right at the top. Outside of a bad kernel compile I can't imagine a good reason to reinstall (and I've even found ways to get around that).

The link in the post previous to this one references an app called qemu. I've never used it myself however it sounds a great deal like VMWare and if so would be perfect for dry runs of kernels and app installs (not so much driver configs I think). I personally use VMWare ($118 USD for students!!) not only for dry runs but to keep a copy of M$ around for all of the unpaid helpdesk work I have to do for my computer illiterate family.

Lastly, when I do rebuild a machine I save /etc, /home, and /root directories and that has served me WELL!! You forget how many little tweaks you make to a Linux OS over time until you rebuild for whatever reason and find your five-button mouse not working without any rememberance of where you found the config last time. Some say to save the /usr/local directory as well and as a newb I can't disagree, I can only list it as an option I've never seen the need for.