Re: Configuration DB
Once upon a time John Hasler said...
> Cameron Hutchison writes:
> > Hard disk crash. I've gone through the same pain as the original poster.
>
> So you mean restore, not reinstall.
Well, both. I restored my system by reinstalling it.
> Any package that overwrites your changes to config files and/or uses
> debconf as a registry is seriously buggy.
For some packages, I will maintain its configuration through debconf,
since I have no desire to understand another config file syntax and
debconf is used well by the package to generate a config file given some
basic information.
If I am to change some of that basic information, it needs to be in
debconf. Therefore I need to be able to reload the debconf database from
a backup. That is, it is not enough just to restore /etc. That will get
the system back up and running with the same configuration at that point
in time, but future reconfiguration through debconf will not work.
> > How can you backup your debconf answers and restore them in such a way
> > that it replaces re-entering the answers?
>
> Back up /var/cache/debconf
While I accept that this is the correct answer, surely this is the wrong
place to put this sort of data?
According to the filesystem hierarchy standard (FHS) at
http://www.debian.org/doc/packaging-manuals/fhs/fhs-5.2.html ,
it says:
/var/cache is intended for cached data from applications. Such
data is locally generated as a result of time-consuming I/O or
calculation. The application must be able to regenerate or restore
the data. Unlike /var/spool, the cached files can be deleted without
data loss. The data should remain valid between invocations of the
application and rebooting the system.
I dont see how the debconf application can regenerate or restore this
data should it be deleted.
More distressing for me is that I dont include /var/cache in my backups.
According to FHS, I should not have to.
Thanks for your answers, John.
CHeers
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