Re: [K12OSN] bad rpm database after restore from backup

[Julius Szelagiewicz <julius turtle com>]

On Sun, 4 Jan 2004, Les Mikesell wrote:

> On Sun, 2004-01-04 at 07:27, Julius Szelagiewicz wrote:
>
> > 	no rpm operation worked before i blew away the database - that
> > meant no yum as well. i cleaned out the rpm database just to be able to
> > use apt to remove cups and install lprng. this din't go smothly, but it
> > did go. still no joy with printtool, or printing, for that matter.
> > 	the plan is: total destruction of th weekend by full install of
> > 3.1.2 from scratch and than a very judicious restore:
> > /home, /usr/local/bin, stop dhcpd, blow away leases files, in /etc:
> > passwd, shadow, group, gshadow, dhcpd.conf, rsyncd.conf, ./init.d/nat ...
> >
> > what am i forgetting here?
>
> Just a lot of updates.  I'd copy all of /etc somewhere else so
> you can pick individual files to copy back easier than doing
> it from tape. Then do the apt-get or yum update to the fresh
> install before dropping the old stuff back.
>
> If you have a similar 3.1.2 install somewhere, you might make
> one last attempt to make rpm work by copying everything related
> over from the other machine.
>
> If there is a lesson to be learned here it is that the best
> way to to a major upgrade is to have a spare machine where
> you can build it and cut over.  Then if there are problems
> you can switch back quickly.  This isn't too expensive if
> you have several servers because you only need to keep a
> couple of spares so you can use one for testing and one
> as the spare for repairs and rebuilds.  Hot-swap disk
> carriers are a nice touch too, so you can just trade disks
> instead of the whole machine.
>
> And if it is any consolation, we have had even worse problems
> doing upgrades on Windows servers.  Usually we make Norton
> Ghost images of them for the restore because it is faster
> and safer than most backups.
>
Les,
	as to "what am i forgetting": little things like samba, like
making sure apt works the way i like it ....
	decided to keep cups and printers by hand. the system seems to run
well, we'll see tomorrow under load
	restore from backup on a slightly different system is always a
real pain.
thank you for the help and for just being there. julius

p.s. i'll make a short writeup of sane "do"s and "don't"s when i get to
see that the server is stable at the old setup. one thing is sure: "don't
even think that apt-get dist-upgrade is equivalent to configuring from new
iso files" ;-)