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Improve layout configuration part of the user guide #3125
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This term is never defined or used anywhere. Let's talk about the layout file instead.
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diff gets confused by the move of a large piece of text, so the diff of the whole PR does not make much sense. I suggest to look at per-commit diffs (https://github.com/rear/rear/pull/3125/commits) when reviewing the PR, each of them looks reasonable. |
Thanks for working on the rear docs! I've had a look at these commits but I have nothing to add really. I might be able to comment better once committed and I can read it as a whole but even then, I don't know rear well enough to be correcting one of the devs. |
@danboid FYI: |
=== Manual excludes | ||
It seems prudent to prevent the external drives from ever being backed-up or overwritten. The default configuration contains these lines: | ||
If we mount the filesystem on +/dev/mapper/backup-backup+ on +/backup+, | ||
Relax-and-Recover will think that it's necessary to recreate the filesystem: |
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Could you rephrase it so that it does no longer look
as if Relax-and-Recover has the ability to think
e.g. like
If we mount the filesystem on /dev/mapper/backup-backup on /backup,
Relax-and-Recover will recreate this filesystem.
Relax-and-Recover recreates mounted filesystems
except filesystems that get excluded by default.
This is only an offhanded proposal.
I did not verify that ReaR really recreates filesystems
only depending on whether or not they are mounted.
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I did not verify that ReaR really recreates filesystems
only depending on whether or not they are mounted.
I verified that, actually.
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See also #3129
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@pcahyna
thank you for proof-reading our documentation
and for your fixes!
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Thank you @pcahyna for improving the documentation, any clean-as-you-go is of course also appreciated.
@jsmeix I think that the main point is an improvement and let's be happy with whatever we can get as documentation contributions are already rather seldom.
And yes, I agree that we should try to avoid overly "fluffy" language. And we have a lot of old and older stuff in ReaR, where we won't have time to fix it all any time soon.
Avoid the "easiest", "inadvertently" expressions.
EXCLUDE_RESTORE and EXCLUDE_BACKUP are irrelevant for layout file and disk layout recreation. They merely influence file backup or restore (for supported backup methods). This guide is about the recreation of the disk layout. Therefore, omit the variables from here. They are not used in the doc anywhere anyway after showing a copy of their description originating from default.conf. So, why to show it at all?
I believe that "This behavior is controlled by the +AUTOEXCLUDE_DISKS=y+ parameter" must refer to the exclusion of the unused backup disk. At the current location (disk layout when the backup disk is NOT unused anymore) it does not make sense. Move the whole part about autoexcludes just after the section where it is mentioned that a disk was automatically excluded.
Show only the parts that have changed after changing something.
4d6fac7 changed the formatting of commented entries in layout: "Change commenting in layout file to have no space after the #." Adapt the examples that had been generated before the change to match.
Instead of copying a snippet of default.conf, describe in prose what the variable does and what is the syntax.
Instead of referring to what seems prudent, describe the assumptions beyond the example explicitly. This way, the reader can understand what we want to achieve, regardless what is their opinion on what is prudent and what is not. Also, describe briefly the relation between layout configuration and backup exclusion.
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Hi @jsmeix @schlomo thank you for looking, I made some changes according to your comments. Any opinion on
? |
I think a new chapter that only describes variables Right now I see that we have already a chapter 7 |
Yes, unfortunately the chapters are numbered, so to insert a new one we would have to renumber the following ones. @jsmeix do you think the description of file backup-related variables should be added also to this chapter? This would make it less focused, though. |
@pcahyna
https://en.opensuse.org/SDB:Disaster_Recovery#Relax-and-Recover_versus_backup_and_restore |
At first glance I think
So from my current point of view |
The document does not suggest to leak secrets. I believe that what is intended is to mention the preservation of root's |
Maybe. But the whole layout recreation is implemented with this in mind, with all the
I must say I don't like the whole section https://github.com/rear/rear/blob/master/doc/user-guide/06-layout-configuration.adoc#restore-to-different-hardware , WDYT? |
@danboid can you please have a look at the resulting document https://github.com/rear/rear/blob/16d6be5664a24ce5f30e5f8b9cb727e89a15c37f/doc/user-guide/06-layout-configuration.adoc ? Not to check correctness, but to see whether it is better understandable than the previous version and addresses #2997 . (Note that the backup options EXCLUDE_BACKUP etc. are deliberately omitted, as they don't refer to the layout configuration.) |
@pcahyna I did not pay attention to this section because In general I find migration to different hardware I think what that section basically tells is that So the basic information is still true and users |
@jsmeix I especially dislike the wording
as it sounds like one can leave figuring out the details to the moment when disaster happens (although this may not have been the original intent of the text). |
@pcahyna
that part about "being lazy" is unchanged I think what it tries to tell is that
At SUSE we officially support only the latter case, cf. |
@pcahyna |
@jsmeix I have been hoping that my professional doc writer colleague would review the PR and possibly even help with the numerous formal/style problems that we identified, that's why I have kept the PR open. Does it conflict with your work? |
@pcahyna |
Stale pull request message |
Pull Request Details:
Type: Enhancement
Impact: Low
Reference to related issue (URL): related to Improve docs for manual excludes #2997
How was this pull request tested?
Not tested.
Description of the changes in this pull request:
Improvements of the layout configuration part of the user guide to address Improve docs for manual excludes #2997
EXCLUDE_RECREATE
better. Instead of copying a snippet of default.conf, describe in prose what the variable does and what is the syntax.AUTOEXCLUDE_DISKS=y
parameter" must refer to the exclusion of the unused backup disk. At the current location (disk layout when the backup disk is NOT unused anymore) it does not make sense. Move the whole part about autoexcludes just after the section where it is mentioned that a disk was automatically excluded.EXCLUDE_RESTORE
andEXCLUDE_BACKUP
are irrelevant for layout file and disk layout recreation. They merely influence file backup or restore (for supported backup methods). This guide is about the recreation of the disk layout. Therefore, omit the variables from here. They are not used in the doc anywhere anyway after showing a copy of their description originating from default.conf. So, why to show it at all?Open question: where to describe variables that control only the file backup and restoration (for supported backup methods)? Like
EXCLUDE_RESTORE
andEXCLUDE_BACKUP
andBACKUP_PROG_EXCLUDE
. They don't belong here as this chapter is only about storage layout recreation. I think it would be the best to introduce chapter 7 with this information.