Uggg!
Kris Kennaway
kris at obsecurity.org
Fri Jun 1 17:05:15 UTC 2007
On Fri, Jun 01, 2007 at 02:15:48AM -0700, Ade Lovett wrote:
>
> On Jun 01, 2007, at 01:33 , Kris Kennaway wrote:
> >Download the packages from the FTP site and either reinstall them or
> >extract the +CONTENTS. This will work best if you don't have local
> >make.conf customizations, otherwise you will see variance.
>
> Actually, this does bring up a meta-issue that ports, pkgsrc,
> portage, all suffer from.
>
> What happens when the metadata gets blown away (by accident, hardware
> crash, flaming meteor from Mars, etc.)
>
> Is there anything we can do to mitigate this?
>
> Yes. It's an open-ended question. I also have no obvious solution.
> But I do see the need for such.
I am not really sure there is a solution: unless the user has used a
precompiled "standard" package is not just representing data that is
cached from somewhere else and can be reconstructed, it is usually
unique to a particular build. Even if they use a standard package it
may have changed in the meantime.
Best solution is to back up /var/db/pkg if it is in danger of deletion
by a wanton admin :)
Kris
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