As I regularly break the OSs I work on, I would like to be able to more systematically plan, assess, modify and recover my system(s). I would like to keep track of changes that I make to the system and have a straight forward method to roll back any one or group of configuration files and see the change versions of binaries.
It would seem there should be a way to do this with SVN. But I don't see how to set up an architecture/tool stack.
The goals would include:
1) Track the Xen installation.
2) Track the dom0 installation.
3) Track and catalogue each domU.
The requirements would seem to include:
1) Identify configuration files changes that occurred between any two time/dates.
2) Compare the differences of each of those files.
3) Facilitate roll back of any one file or more files.
With these capabilities, it would be valuable to use the results to define a recovery plan and associated test/validation plan, plan execution tracking and results/performance recording. This might use something like Trac.
One of the challenges I see is to build this, I do not want to disrupt my dom0. So it would seem to be appropriate to somehow build a system to do this as a vm and either run it as a vm or a docker. But I don't know what the coordination issues are for the development vm to access the Xen and dom space.
Background:
I have installed Jessie on the target desktop which I will use as a work station for both local and remote access from a laptop which I have also installed Jessie and Xen. Being new to Linux, every step I take is an experiment and some of the steps fail and through the help of others online, I eventually recover. But this means my dom0 is probably full of things that are no longer used, or poorly patched. I have rebuilt both of these system from scratch 6 to 8 times due to unrecoverable errors. I have defaulted to rebuilding rather than a recovery disk because:
I have not figured out how to build and use a recovery disk (especially on the laptop with no removable drive but with USB ports).
I have accepted this failing as I learn a lot through repetition.
If I had a method to record all these activities, I am sure I would learn better. I have all sorts of notes that I keep online so system failures won't disrupt my records. But my records are not organized very well as I started without a clear understanding of where I was going.
Thanks in advance for all feedback.
Ray
