Bug 60153

Summary:	Automatic backups of /var/lib/rpm
Product:	[Retired] Red Hat Linux	Reporter:	Sam Varshavchik <mrsam>
Component:	rpm	Assignee:	Jeff Johnson <jbj>
Status:	CLOSED WONTFIX	QA Contact:
Severity:	medium	Docs Contact:
Priority:	low
Version:	7.3	Keywords:	FutureFeature
Target Milestone:	---
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Hardware:	All
OS:	Linux
Whiteboard:
Fixed In Version:		Doc Type:	Enhancement
Doc Text:		Story Points:	---
Clone Of:		Environment:
Last Closed:	2002-02-20 23:58:33 UTC	Type:	---
Regression:	---	Mount Type:	---
Documentation:	---	CRM:
Verified Versions:		Category:	---
oVirt Team:	---	RHEL 7.3 requirements from Atomic Host:
Cloudforms Team:	---	Target Upstream Version:
Embargoed:

Description Sam Varshavchik 2002-02-20 23:58:29 UTC

A corrupted /var/lib/rpm, beyond all repair (see bug 60152), prompted me to
think about ways to recover from otherwise irrecoverable database damage.

Suggestion: Any package install/removal creates a dummy flag file; a cron.daily
job checks if the dummy flag file exists; if it exists the job copies
/var/lib/rpm to /var/lib/rpm.[12345] (a rotating backup set) while maintaining a
read-only lock on the database.

Then, if the database ends up corrupted beyond repair it should still be
possible to recover a clean database going back for at least five days.

Comment 1 Jeff Johnson 2002-02-24 16:15:39 UTC

There's nothing stopping you from doing backups of
critical files anytime you wish, rpm is not the
problem here.