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! -- To UNSUBSCRIBE, email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] with a subject of "unsubscribe". Trouble? Contact [EMAIL PROTECTED]
