Thursday, June 21, 2012

backupdate or screwupdate: choose wisely

from here

inspired in part by a tweet from bob rudis but also by the issue surround flame's spoofing of microsoft windows update. i don't know about others, but i have for some time been taking a current drive images before applying updates, then restoring a previous saved image (from the previous time i applied updates), then applying the updates, and then taking another drive image (to restore the next time i apply updates). it's already saved my bacon a time or two without having anything to do with malware. it's always good to have a way to undo things.

2 comments:

David Frier said...

Wait... what? If you last applied an update 1 at T=1 and then took a drive image backup, let's call that T1U1.

So at T=2 you take an image backup (T2U1), then restore T1U1, apply update 2, then take an image (T1U2), all you have is T1U2 live and your image backup T2U1 in your drawer. You can't restore T2U1 because you'll lose U2.

What am I missing here?

kurt wismer said...

well, actually you can go back to T2U1 temporarily (and i have) if there was important data there that you didn't account for before you restored T1U1.

other than that, i don't think you're missing anything.