Arch Linux

awagner

Member

From: Mainz, Germany

Registered: 2007-08-24

Posts: 189

abs/local gone, dunno why

Hi all,
I'm just terrified for having found out that my /var/abs/local directory is gone. And quite a lot of stuff with it.
While I am now busy downloading my own contributions from AUR, I thought I should ask here if someone has an idea what has happened.

My /var/abs/local was a symlink to ~/Temp/abs-local. And funnily enough, the symlink is still there, only the directory in ~/Temp isn't. I noticed that on abs updates I had to re-create the symlink. But now it's sort of the other way round. (I also noticed that the abs PKGBUILD creates a directory /var/abs/local, could that have sth. to do with it; and has it always done so?)

Any idea what has happened and, more importantly, how I can prevent it from happening again?

Andreas

PS. To be honest, I'm not sure the blame is to be put on the abs update. I have messed around quite a lot with new kernels (fom my abs-local folder) and moving/resizing partitions...

Profjim

Member

From: NYC

Registered: 2008-03-24

Posts: 658

Re: abs/local gone, dunno why

My experience was also that abs updates would wipe out my symlink at /var/abs/local. (I wanted to keep my abs stuff on a different partition.) So I gave up and just started training myself to cd to my designated abs-local directory directly. Nothing in the abs program seems to require that you keep your stuff in /var/abs/local. In fact they just make it harder by overwriting symlinks, as they have been doing. (Instead of creating an empty /var/abs/local directory in its build() function, the abs PKGBUILD should instead have an install script create an empty directory there if no directory or symlink already exists.) yaourt will try to build AUR packages in /var/abs/local/yaourt-something-or-other, but it will happily fall back to using /tmp if that fails.

Sorry I can't answer your question whether anything has changed with abs---I had already stopped trying to fight it. But it's conceivable that changes in pacman might result in the empty /var/abs/local directory in the abs package overwriting not your symlink, but instead wiping out the directory it's symlinked to. If so, that would be a more general problem with pacman. Worth looking into...

Snowman

Developer/Forum Fellow

From: Montreal, Canada

Registered: 2004-08-20

Posts: 5,212

Re: abs/local gone, dunno why

Thats's because abs is now using rsync. Keep your modified PKGBUILD in your home directory and remove the /var/abs/local symlink. There are other thread about this issue.

awagner

Member

From: Mainz, Germany

Registered: 2007-08-24

Posts: 189

Re: abs/local gone, dunno why

I've read up a couple of the other threads and just wanted to point out that what was missing wasn't the symlink, but the directory it had linked to. Iow, /var/abs/local was a broken symlink because ~/Temp/abs-local had been deleted. As far as I understood the other threads I've found, abs would have either removed the symlink or leave everything in /var/abs/local alone. That's why I was so puzzled.

Anyway, I personally do my local building and stuff now in $HOME again and skip the symlinking part, so I suppose it won't be a problem anymore for me. I just wanted to have mentioned what has happened in case anyone finds an important issue behind it.

Thanks for your responses.