"System Default" kind of wipe: possible? How would one do this?

Would it be possible to take an existing installation and effectively reinstall all packages, restore all configuration files to their default config as if on a new install on that program, and wipe all user data (probably not in that order) so as to restore a system to a kind of "first boot" setting but with your current package listing retained.
How would one go about this? Could one slip into a terminal, sudo rm -r /some/folders/here (what folders necessary?) and then use pacman to reinstall ... everything (what kind of command would get you that? something with a grep listing?)

karol wrote:
r3bel wrote:
karol wrote:
Unless you use a ton of system-wide configs ;P
The problem of using a backup or hard drive image of your pristine installation is that Arch changes pretty fast and a 6-month-old installation would need a bit of work to get up to speed.
Correct me if I'm wrong but wouldnt a pacman -Syu do most of the job?
Depends on what changed in Arch in the meantime, what changes you made and what do you mean by 'most of the job'.
Let's say you've made your backup a couple months ago and now you want to move from grub-legacy to syslinux, install KDE and try systemd. If you revert to said backup in a month, you will have to do a few important changes "manually" because at the time of that backup you were using grub, initscripts and e.g. Gnome.
Reverting to the "clean slate" backup, updating it and making a fresh backup once you've tested the new configuration shouldn't be much of a problem but it's not automatic. You may need to perform some manual conflict resolution etc. (see the home page).
This is exactly why I wanted to strip the system clean and let the programs act as if this were a new install, without changing my partition table, have to download 12 gigs of data, etc. Reinstall the system without a format. Some of these changes that needed manual adjustment have caused a bit of a headache, it would be nice to have a nuclear option without having to reinstall. Especially now that AIF isn't around anymore I'd have to have a second computer to tell me what commands to run just to get things going again...

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