Hi,
I discovered rsnapshot some weeks ago and since then I use it on a daily
base. I saw that Nathan provided a Debian package. As I'm very
interessted in packaging Software for Debian I examined the deb and
found some grave policy violations in it. I wanted to see rsnapshot in
the official debian archive and therefor made, with help from Nathan, a
policy compilant Debian package.
To upload packages to the official Debian archive
you must be an official Debian Developer (DD). Well I'm not a DD but I
found one who is willing to sponsor the package. This means I'm the
maintainer of the package, he checks the quality of it and uploads it to
the official archive.
The first version which was uploaded is 1.1.6-5. It was uploaded on the
16. July but is waiting for the manual approval from the ftpmaster,
which is the standard procedure for new packages. This means it could take
some weeks (worst case) until it made it's way to the archive.
DIFFERENCES
===========
* The standard snapshot_root is now \var\cache\rsnapshot\
* cmd_cp is now enabled by default
* There is now a sample cron file (/etc/cron.d/rsnapshot), to activate it
you have to uncomment the relevant lines.
* The logfile is now enabled by default and renamed to /var/log/rsnapshot.log.
It is rotated every month. The last 6 month are stored in a compressed
form.
* The pidfile is now enabled by default and renamed to /var/run/rsnapshot.pid.
UPGRADE
=======
For those of you who are using the unstable (sid) distribution of Debian
an apt-get update; apt-get upgrade will install the new package
automatically if it's in the archive one day.
I tested the upgrade from Nathans last deb (1.1.6-1) to the new one
(1.1.6-5) with no problems. There will be a notice that the package want's
to install a new configuration file and you have to choose from:
* install the new one -> your configuration will be OVERWRITTEN
* keep the old one -> everything should work without problems
* show a diff
* start a shell
I would suggest to keep the old one and maybe migrating to the new one
manually. Nevertheless before upgrading BACKUP your /etc/rsnapshot.conf.
If you had already enabled the rsnapshot logfile you could benefit of the
logrotate feature by renaming the logfile to /var/log/rsnapshot.log in
the conffile as well as renaming the existing file.
DOWNLOAD
========
Once it is in the official archive the usual apt-get install rsnapshot /
apt-get upgrade would be enough for installing / upgrading the package.
Meanwhile you can get it by adding
deb http://wegi.net/debian unstable/
to your /etc/apt/sources.list
WOODY
=====
This package was made for the unstable distribution (sid), but I see no
reason why it shouldn't work on Woody as well. Unfortunatly I don't have
a woody installation for testing it. Maybe somebody could test it and
reports the results to that list. If it is not working on woody, I intend
to provide a backport under
deb http://wegi.net/debian woody/
BUGS, COMMENTS, ...
===================
I would appreciate any comments on the package, packaging related bugs
and whishes. Please send them either to rsnapshot-discuss or to me
personally (christoph.wegscheider < at > wegi.net).
Once rsnapshot is in the official archive, I would prefer using the
Debian bug tracking system (http://bugs.debian.org) for packaging
releated bugs and whishes.
I'll send an announcement to that list if the package is available in
the official debian archive.
Christoph
