Folks, I am in the middle of writing ``dbackup'' -- a backup mechanism which will take advantage of the debian packaging mechanism to reduce the amount of storage required to make a complete backup of your system.
I wanted to confirm that the files under /var/catman are generated from source files provided with the various packages and thus don't need to be backed up. It occurs to me that that might not always be the case, and in any event, we will need some method of identifying files which do not need to be backed up because they are generated on the fly (font files come to mind). What I am considering is a script file which would be optional for each package. I suggest that this file be treated just like the {pre,post}{inst,rm} files. It would be called ``backup'' and would be maintained as part of the package under the name ``debian.backup''. It would be installed into /var/lib/dpkg/info along with the other package information as <package>.backup. The backup script would provide on its standard output a list of files that should not be backed up, even though they are not listed in the <package>.list file. What do you people think of this? Thanks, David -- David H. Silber [EMAIL PROTECTED] Project: Debian GNU/Linux (dbackup) <http://www.access.digex.net/~dhs/> Wanted: Spare time. Programmer for hire.