Re: deb/rpm package purge

[Dan Mick <dan.mick@inktank.com>]

>>>> As a point of comparison, mysql removes the config files but not
>>>> /var/lib/mysql.
>>>> The question is, is that okay/typical/desireable/recommended/a bad idea?
>   I should have asked this sooner. Do you know _any_ program that removes
> your favorite music collection, your family photos or your business
> emails when you do uninstall it?
> I suspect that your question was theoretical instead.

It's somewhat different in that the data is not owned by one user, but 
there are clear parallels.  The thing to be careful about here, IMO, is 
not only to preserve the data, but the associated files that allow
(reasonably-easy) access to that data.  (It's no good preserving the OSD
filestore if the keys, monmap, or osdmap are gone or hard to recover.)

>> - remove /etc/ceph if it has been untouched
>   This is an other case. dpkg itself handle package files here, called
> conffiles. I should check the method (md5sum and/or sha1 variants) used
> for the checksum on these files. On upgrade it's used not to overwrite
> local changes by the user. It may worth to read a bit more about it[1]
> from Raphaël Hertzog. He is the co-author of Debian Administrator's
> handbook[2] BTW.

Excellent reference; thanks for the pointer.

>   On purge dpkg will remove the package conffiles no matter what. It
> won't check if those were changed or not. You may not mark the files
> under /etc as conffiles, but then you'll lose the mentioned
> merge logic on upgrades; dpkg will just overwrite those.
>   In short, files under /var/lib/ceph are the only candidates for
> in-package checksumming. How many files under there that essential for
> the packages?
>
> Laszlo/GCS
> [1] http://raphaelhertzog.com/2010/09/21/debian-conffile-configuration-file-managed-by-dpkg/
> [2] http://debian-handbook.info/
>
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