Standardising "my" installation

[forquare]

Hello all,

I’ve only been using Manjaro for around 9 months. Coming from a FreeBSD background, my head went to wanting ZFS-on-root (mirrored SSDs) with automated snapshotting, boot environments, yadda yadda yadda. But coming up to a year on, I realise that because ZFS isn’t as baked in I really don’t reap some of the same benefits as I do in FreeBSD…

So, I’ve got myself a shiny new nvme drive, and figured I’d do a reinstall. Because I won’t be snapshotting/mirroring my root disk in the same way, I thought it would be good to have the OS installation standardised - so should anything really break in the future for me I can just reinstall using a script or some documentation and get back to a good state.
My data will reside on a ZFS pool and backed up separately, but I’d like the system to be as “disposable” as possible.

Bearing in mind that reinstalls could be months or years apart, a scripted install sounds risky because options could change over time, whereas a documented standard install would let “future me” know “here’s what I did last time, choose something equivalent this time”

I also have some DKMS modules (e.g. nvidia, ZFS) required to run my system and don’t know if it’s best to install these along with the OS, or after the fact.

What are you recommendations with regards to scripted/documented installs, and would it be considered best practise to install DKMS modules with the OS, or afterwards?

Many thanks for you time,
Ben

[Fabby]

@forquare

so should anything really break in the future for me I can just reinstall using a script or some documentation and get back to a good state.

Please read this:

[HowTo] make a crash-proof backup for Manjaro

Difficulty: ★★☆☆☆ A few things you need to know about backups: One copy does not constitute a good backup! Backing up is not about the backup itself, it’s all about the easy and fast restore! Backup files should be stored on an external disk that gets connected to the system only during a backup or restore cycle so that RansomWare cannot encrypt your backup when it stumbles into your system through wine ¹ Alternatively, you can use a NAS directory that is protected by a password and that get…

Which gives you everything you want / need and a few more advantages using completely different technology…

[forquare]

That’s quite an interesting solution. More continual effort than I was initially thinking - since I’d need to periodically create a clone of my desktop - but would also mean my config as code piece would have a smaller (or no) delta to get to a fully up-to-date system.

Thanks for the solution!