"G.W. Haywood" wrote:
> Hi there,
>
> On Sat, 15 Nov 2025, Paul Fox via backuppc-users wrote:
>
> > jbk wrote:
> >
> > > Unless I'm misunderstanding this, is the localconfig.pl to
> > > define a backup schedule for the server?
> >
> > No, not specifically. It holds any configuration you might otherwise
> > put in config.pl, which is read prior to localconfig.pl. All it
> > really does is let you segregate local changes from distributed
> > changes, if that's useful to the administrator.
> >
> > Honestly, now that we're talking about it, I can't see why this shouldn't
> > just be added to backuppc as a permanent feature. It's pretty lightweight,
> > and useful. So I guess I'm championing it after all.
>
> Hmmmm...
>
> You can get the entire patchset from (for example)
>
> https://udd.debian.org/patches.cgi?src=backuppc&version=4.4.0-11
>
> and easily apply the localconfig part. It's a one-line change in
> .../lib/BackupPC/Storage/Text.pm. Although I've gone through all the
> patches, checked whether or not they should be aplide here at the top
> of the stream and applied those that I think shoudld, I haven't spent
> a lot of time on this one and I haven't applied it. At this stage I
> don't propose to. There's a good chance I've missed something but as
> it stands I'm not sure that I understand what the patch is for. I'm
> also not sure that it will do what everyone here seems to think that
> it will do. So I have reservations. Below is how I read it. I'd be
> very pleased if others will chime in with their own take on it.
>
> The BackupPC configuration routines read the configuration files into
> a big hash. With the Debian patch, when localconfig.pl is present it
> will be read *before* BackupPC's main config.pl, and anything in your
> localconfig.pl which *also* exists in config.pl will be overridden by
> the values in config.pl, so if you wanted the values in localconfig.pl
> to be used in preference to those in config.pl, you'd have to comment
> them out or whatever in config.pl. So far so not especially useful.
I've just done some testing on 4.4.0.
- I was surprised to find that the debian patch is still in place,
in the code, since when I originally filed the issue it was
because it appeared that my local changes were no longer being
applied in backuppc 4, and so I assumed the patch had been
dropped.
- I find that it (currently) works exactly as you describe:
config entries found in config.pl take precedence over those
found in localconfig.pl. So presumably this was also
happening during my initial use of backuppc 4, and it wasn't
that the patch had been dropped -- my changes just wasn't
having any effect, since my localconfig.pl changes were being
"hidden" by the original values in config.pl.
It seems that something happened in the backuppc 3 to 4 transition
which changed how the config is read, or stored, or processed, and it
broke the debian patch. I don't have the knowledge (of either perl,
or backuppc internals) to track down what changed.
Since the Debian patch has been broken for several years now, it seems
like there must not be much demand for the functionality. Given that,
it seems that backuppc issue #486 is moot, and can be closed with no
changes.
If the old behavior is desireable, then probably a new "enhancement"
issue should be created.
paul
=----------------------
paul fox, [email protected] (arlington, ma, where it's 31.5 degrees)
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