Fedora's Amanda mispackaged? (was: Re: Backing up whole system)

[Michael Schwendt]

On Sat, 09 May 2009 19:32:24 -0400, Gene wrote:

> I wasn't trying to 'glorify' my lack of knowledge, I readily admit it cuz 
> everytime I get rpm figured out so it will build from a src package, the API 
> changes with the next version of this hat.

Really? Sounds unusual. RPM .spec files are only a bit more than [and a bit
different than] shell scripts. Shell scripts as admins use them to automate
the step-by-step building'n'installing of software from source archives.
Don't say you never save the steps (or parts of the shell's history) in
order to reuse them for future builds.

> However, this conversation demos that everyone has their own favorite sacred 
> cow.  Yumex/yum/rpm is a good tool indeed when it works.

?  Let's not mix RPM with Yum and with other tools based on Yum's API.
Primary question is whether Fedora's Amanda package is working fine or
whether it suffers from issues? Problems with package management tools may
be completely separate.

> I presume the acid test would be for me to install your 2.6.0p2 and see if it 
> works tonight, using my existing configuration.

Are they compatible? Is 2.6.0p2 only "ancient" (as you call it) or is it
significantly different from the 2.6.2alpha snapshot you refer to? Are
the configuration files (and their locations) compatible?

You may need to eradicate all your custom configuration prior to starting
from scratch with Fedora's packages. Else it may not be feasible for
other people to reproduce issues you run into.
 
> But obviously it won't just install and run, since an su amanda -c "amcheck 
> Daily" after the install reports no problems, and used version 
> 2.6.2alpha-20090505.  So I had yumex remove it.
> 
> And removing it did screw things up.  It removed my /etc/xinetd.d/amanda 
> config file.

Unmodified configuration files may be removed by RPM as no harm is done
by doing that. RPM doesn't care about files not belonging into any package
in the local RPM database.

> You may want to file a bug, the config files really should not be touched if 
> they are found to exist at install, and left untouched if there is an .rpmnew
> version there.

This is not how RPM works. It never has worked like that.
The .rpm{new,save,orig} mechanism only works with files tracked in the
local RPM database.
 
> So where does the rpm install it?  Should it not find stuff in /bin before it 
> looks in /usr/bin?  And in /usr/lib before it looks in /usr/local/lib (or 
> libexec).??

rpm --query --list amanda

Please present step-by-step instructions on how to reproduce problems
with Fedora's Amanda packages.