quoted

quoted

problem. This method does require that I update the two backups by
hand once in awhile. That's OK by me.

       Define, "once in awhile [sic]".

Every 2-3 months I make sure each drive is up to date.

	I was having to update one server or the other every week or so,
sometimes more than once a week.  I could have written scripts to do it, or
used rsync, I suppose, but I opted for RAID1.

quoted

It's certainly possible to do it,
but the very reason I went with boot arrays rather than boot partitions

was

quoted

it was getting to be a pain to update the backup drives all the time.

All the time vs once every 2-3 months.

Even an out-of-date boot drive will allow me to boot the machine and
get things fixed.

quoted

Almost every time a package is added or deleted, /etc gets updated.

 Keeping

quoted

different copies of the configuration files in /etc in the initrd and

the

quoted

root partition is not the best of ideas, although if course it can be

done.

As I said I don't using an initrd. I've never learned how to build one
and didn't need it if I didn't use RAID on /boot.

	Most distros these days employ an initrd.  One re-builds it by
running whatever application is included with the distro for that purpose.
In the case of Debian and Debian derivatives, it is currently
`update-initramfs`.  It's built the first time by installing a Linux distro.
It's not that difficult to do by hand, however.  Most are built using cpio
and gzip.  Once one has the directory structure one wishes, one simply
creates a compressed tarball (cpioball?) from the structure.  It includes a
copy of /etc, with some special scripts to allow the system to work prior to
the existence of the "real" /.

I don't understand your comments about /etc as it's not kept in /boot.
/etc, /, /home, and all other directories are on RAID. Only /boot
isn't, so it needs only a kernel and grub.

	The initrd has a copy of /etc - especially the boot configuration
files such as mdadm.conf, fstab, etc.

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