Restoring /var/db/pkg?

G-LiTe` · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 06 May 2003 Posts: 147

So I did and emerge sync today, however it crashed during fixpackages. (lost the traceback) So I wiped /usr/portage/packages (knowing it wouldn't do harm) and tried again in vain. It mentioned /var/db/pkg in there so I thought, what the hell, wipe that too. (great idea, huh? stupid me didn't know what the consequences were.

)
So now portage thinks there's absolutely no packages installed... And I don't really feel like recompiling X, gnome, kde, firebird, etc.
Is there anyway to regenerate /var/db/pkg or maybe some other fix? I know I'm stupid but please help me. :oops:

dberkholz · Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2003 10:45 pm Post subject:

Edit: Cyfred has a script. See below.
I asked a few people in #gentoo, and all we came up with was recompiling everything with 'emerge -e world'.

Pythonhead · Posted: Mon Jun 02, 2003 11:05 pm Post subject:

cyfred · Retired Dev Joined: 23 Aug 2002 Posts: 596

Give me a few hours and I can make up a script for this. I did have one half done just now but then I realised that qpkg and emerge are not going to reflect the current state of your system. So there are a few more fancier tricks that need to be applied.

Note using the script that im _trying_ to write isnt totally recommended as it will not restore everything -- some packages never get mentioned. So you will need to probably emerge -e some packages.

cyfred · Retired Dev Joined: 23 Aug 2002 Posts: 596

OK here is the script.

Please note that this is a bit of a hack way of doing things and will result in "orphaned" files as spyderous put it too me on #gentoo. This script is functional and should restore all of your packages but will probably miss one or two somewhere, if you get a complaint later then just re-emerge that package that was missed.

Please read the comments at the end of the process, in summary
1) Run regenworld
2) Run emerge -up world

http://www.volutin.net/~andrew/GENTOO/tools/regenpkgdb -- changed host use below
EDIT http://www.volutin.net/andrew/GENTOO/tools/regenpkgdb

This is a bash script so you will need to chmod +x it to execute it.
Download and save this script to /root and then
cd /root
chmod 700 regenpkgdb
./regenpkgdb

The script should take half a minute (roughly) on a 2Ghz machine.

dberkholz · Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2003 5:43 am Post subject:

So to regenerate the pkg db in a more "real" way, perhaps we should try fooling portage into thinking it's compiled (and downloaded if possible), then getting it to add itself to /var/db/pkg. Using ebuild instead of emerge is a possibility.

G-LiTe` · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 06 May 2003 Posts: 147

G-LiTe` · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 06 May 2003 Posts: 147

Hmmm... some more things. When I tried to merge a package, it gave a whole bunch of the following:

dberkholz · Posted: Tue Jun 03, 2003 3:08 pm Post subject:

cyfred · Retired Dev Joined: 23 Aug 2002 Posts: 596

G-Lite the issue with the COUNTER errors is because I didnt have the script actually place values into the files under /var/db/pkg/*/*/XYZ -- That can sortof be ignored, but noted so that maybe can be fixed later.

You should note that what happens here is technically not an injection.
Injected packages do NOT get upgraded, this method though will gauruntee that your packages get upgraded.

KDE (or GNOME) probably need to have the respective /var/db/pkg entry created manually, provided that you already have all of the packages listed by emerge kde installed. This is something that I overlooked in the script, actually it didnt occur to me because my dev machine only has kdebase/libs installed.

Will look at that in the future...

cyfred · Retired Dev Joined: 23 Aug 2002 Posts: 596

Wether or not this is still a relevent feature may yet to be seen, but I have just resumed working on this project. The script is now based in python, thanks very muchly to rvdp for porting the above efforts.

The next script will be complete as I can get it, and should restore not only your portage tree database but the files that make up the package information.

The main problem Im having is actually how to establish a list of all the files that a package owns (aka /var/db/pkg/*/*/CONTENTS), which is normally listed by

G-LiTe` · Tux's lil' helper Joined: 06 May 2003 Posts: 147

The only way to do that afaik is to check the contents of the package in /usr/portage/packages.
If the package is deleted however, you're screwed.

ecatmur · Posted: Mon May 03, 2004 2:14 am Post subject:

I think that probably the best way to get an idea of CONTENTS is by timestamp.

I have written a small script that does something similar - given an orphaned file, it guesses which package it belongs to by checking the portage log to create a set of intervals and checking to see which interval the mtime of the file falls under. It's a little slow (2 seconds) with just one file but most of that time is spent loading Python, importing portage.py and parsing the logfile, it scales well with multiple files.

You can get it under the GPL 2 from http://catmur.co.uk/my-bin/cruft-blame.py - it should be simple to adjust it to find owners for the full filesystem (well, avoiding the non--Portage-managed parts).
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torres · n00b Joined: 10 Aug 2004 Posts: 24 Location: burgos

dberkholz · Posted: Tue Nov 16, 2004 6:21 pm Post subject:

defenderBG · l33t Joined: 20 Jun 2006 Posts: 817

dberkholz · Posted: Mon Dec 18, 2006 8:51 pm Post subject:

defenderBG · l33t Joined: 20 Jun 2006 Posts: 817

tnx, now I have to emerge only 80 packages.... meaning ~220 spared

fuzzythebear · Guru Joined: 28 Nov 2004 Posts: 317

tried regenpkgdb and regenworld and both failed
to give adequate results .. ideas ?
is there another way , even if it's a pain , to regen that
database even on a one by one package basis ?
note : the /var/log/emerge.log is complete since june this year
and covers all this installations from a to z ..
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hielvc · Posted: Fri Dec 29, 2006 6:53 pm Post subject:

I wrote a script that can regen most of /var/db/pkg.The prob with it is if you had 2 pkg's with the same name but are in different categories youll only get one of them.

You can put a date string in to use emerge.log from such and such a date, hint the last time you did an emerge world -e. deleted /var/db/pkg [solved]

After running the script run dep -dp to see if there is anything you need to add.
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