Re: Configuration DB
On Sun, Aug 08, 2004 at 12:51:23PM +1000, Cameron Hutchison wrote:
> 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.
They will, but you may have to feed in some answers again.
Well-written packages (like postfix) will gather answers from files in
/etc, but these are rather rare.
> > > 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.
The debconf database is nothing more than a temporary cache of answers
gotten from the user. Debconf will regenerate this data by asking any
questions it needs to.
--
You win again, gravity!
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