Re: [ECFT] pkgng 0.1-alpha1: a replacement for pkg_install

On Fri, 25 Mar 2011 16:35:21 +0100 Pietro Cerutti <gahr_at_freebsd.org>
wrote:


> On 2011-Mar-25, 15:03, Julien Laffaye wrote:
> > >>> What about DB corruption/loss? Do you keep
> > >>> the /var/db/pkg/<package>/xxx files even with pkgng and only
> > >>> use the DB as a way to speed up some work (so
> > >>> the DB corruption just requires to run pkg2ng), or are you lost
> > >>> of the DB is
> > >>> lost?
> > >>>
> > >>
> > >> Nothing is done about DB corruption/loss, I am not sure we need
> > >> to do something.
> > >> Maybe.
> > >
> > > I would say "for sure". Info: In Solaris 10 sqlite is used for
> > > the service managenemt framework (SMF). It is possible that the
> > > DB is corrupt in some bad situations. In this case you have to
> > > rebuild the DB (script provided, been there, had to use it).
> > 
> > If sqlite is properly used with transactions, it is very hard to
> > corrupt the database. But if hardware lies to us and say that the

And as I told above, I even had such a case (more than once), and the
hardware was not buggy. What do you want to tell in this case, "life
sucks, reinstall everything"?

> > data is on disk whereas it isnt... what can we do?

Sometimes you have to stay with broken hardware.

> > Another potential problem is fsync(), but if it is broken on FreeBSD
> > we want to fix it!
> > 
> > BTW, the goal is to only have the database and not the flat files.
> > If you are paranoid about power outage, use something like zfs
> > snapshots...

There are more FS than only ZFS (personally I use ZFS, and I have
snapshots, but this is not a good solution for this problem).

As I told already, if it isn't automatic, nearly nobody will use it.
And the package management stuff has to be automatic, no freshman will
think about setting up a snapshot script when he starts to use
packages/ports.

> No need to look for strange scenarios, I'm surely going to sudo rm -f
> the file more sooner than later, so... maybe just save a copy?

A copy or two would be enough, but it has to be done automatically, and
once a day is not enough. A copy after each X modifications maybe
(for suitable definitions of X and 'modifications').

Bye,
Alexander.