dbackup (was: Re: Beta-testing and the glibc 2.1 (Was: Missing ldd? Have libc6 on hold? Get ldso from slink...)
- To: David Bristel <targon@targonia.com>
- Cc: "Seth M. Landsman" <seth@job.cs.brandeis.edu>, renfro@tntech.edu, Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer@pasteur.fr>, Robert Woodcock <rcw@debian.org>, Edward Betts <edward@hairnet.demon.co.uk>, debian-devel@lists.debian.org, debian-user@lists.debian.org
- Subject: dbackup (was: Re: Beta-testing and the glibc 2.1 (Was: Missing ldd? Have libc6 on hold? Get ldso from slink...)
- From: Craig Sanders <cas@taz.net.au>
- Date: Thu, 18 Mar 1999 17:43:02 +1100
- Message-id: <[🔎] 19990318174302.C13282@taz.net.au>
- Mail-followup-to: David Bristel <targon@targonia.com>, "Seth M. Landsman" <seth@job.cs.brandeis.edu>, renfro@tntech.edu, Stephane Bortzmeyer <bortzmeyer@pasteur.fr>, Robert Woodcock <rcw@debian.org>, Edward Betts <edward@hairnet.demon.co.uk>, debian-devel@lists.debian.org, debian-user@lists.debian.org
- In-reply-to: <[🔎] Pine.LNX.3.96.990317130436.977A-100000@gateway.targonia.com>; from David Bristel on Wed, Mar 17, 1999 at 01:10:44PM -0800
- References: <[🔎] 19990317152259.T7376@job.cs.brandeis.edu> <[🔎] Pine.LNX.3.96.990317130436.977A-100000@gateway.targonia.com>
On Wed, Mar 17, 1999 at 01:10:44PM -0800, David Bristel wrote:
> This is a good point, and it actually leads to an interesting idea
> for a package that would take care of this issue. Now, this is NOT
> an easy project, but, what about a package that has a list of the
> config files for ALL the packages, and would back up what is needed
> to restore a system to normal from a clean install? To have just
> the shadow, passwd, and the confs for all the different packages, we
> could back up just these files. Then, reinstall from scratch, ignore
> configurations, because the restore of the config files would handle
> it all. Some would say that this should be handled manually, but it
> would make it nice, and it's something that no other distribution has
> considered doing. Having to manually back up "key files" is a major
> nuisance.
'dbackup' did something similar to but better than this. unfortunately
it got orphaned and eventually droppped form the dist.
i have a copy still installed and can run dpkg-repack on it if anyone
wants to play with it. IIRC, at the moment it outputs a list of
filenames which can be fed into cpio or afio or tar etc - this is quite
useful.
# dpkg -s dbackup
Package: dbackup
Status: install ok installed
Priority: extra
Section: admin
Maintainer: David H. Silber <dhs@firefly.com>
Version: 0.1-alpha.2
Recommends: tar | cpio
Description: Debian GNU/Linux Data Backup Program.
Backup will copy all files that are not part of a Debian package or which
have been modified since installation to some backup media.
.
Actually, at this point it is only true that dbackup produces a list of
files which fit the above qualifications. It is up to the user to feed
this list to some program (such as tar or cpio) for the actual backup.
.
I still need to provide user documentation such as a manual page, an info
page, examples of use, etc.
.
I plan to provide a nifty-spiffy administration tool to make the final
product easier to use, but this is not yet ready.
if nobody else is interested, i may adopt this package myself. i think
it's a shame that it vanished from debian. but i probably don't have
time.
btw, simply backing up a system's conffiles can be done by feeding the
output of 'cat /var/lib/dpkg/info/*.conffiles' into tar/cpio/afio etc.
craig
--
craig sanders
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