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How I do a clean install

Notes for my future self.

Backup

First I use SuperDuper! to create a bootable backup of my whole drive. That backup will be overwritten with new backups once I confirm everything is okay, so I also backup the following to another drive, under pre-clean-install-home-folders/<computer name>-<mm>-<yyyy>.

  • ~/Code
  • Select directories under ~/Library, some of which I just save just in case: FontCollections, Fonts, Keychains, LaunchAgents, Messages, Preferences, Printers, and StickiesDatabase.
  • ~/Documents if there's anything useful there (it's usually empty though)
  • ~/Desktop if there's anything useful there (also usually empty)
  • Then I go through the hidden files and directories in my home directory and backup any of those that look useful.

Then I save lists of installed things to dropbox:

  • ls /Applications > Applications.txt
  • brew list > brew-list.txt
  • brew cask list > brew-cask-list.txt
  • pip freeze > pip-freeze.txt
  • pip3 freeze > pip3-freeze.txt
  • ls go/bin > go-bin.txt
  • tree -L 3 go/src > go-src.txt

And I copy my .histfile to dropbox too.

Backup iStat menus preferences from "File > Export settings", also in Dropbox.

Before I move on to the clean install, I should make sure I don't have any uncommited changes in my work repos:

for f in ~/Code/Work/*; do cd $f; echo $f; git status; done

... and check for uncommitted changes in my dotfiles too.

If I had personal projects, I would check those as well, but... :P.

Clean install of MacOS

I google this.

Restore

  1. Very first thing is to change some preferences: keyboard, trackpad, and display.
  2. Then remove all the junk from the Dock.
  3. I've got to install Dropbox and get it synced so I can see my lists of installed things (maybe I should figure out how to use iCloud for this part).
  4. Then I start by going through the lists of installed things and installing and configuring what I know for sure I will need the next workday.
  5. I restore .histfile from Dropbox as well.
  6. After that, git will certainly have been installed, so I clone my dotfiles and set those up.
  7. Clone the work repos I know I'll be working on soon.
  8. Contact IT to install security software required by work.
  9. Lastly I create a generic admin user, set the same system preferences, and install SuperDuper!. After a while I will log in as the admin user and use SuperDuper! to overwrite my pre-clean-install backup with regular backups of my current system. I do this as a different user so all my usual background processes aren't running and probably changing files during the backup. Maybe this is silly?

Everything else I install as-needed. Ideally I never need to look at the home directory things I backed up, but in pratice there is always something, so I keep my external HD handy.