[Kolab-devel] Kolab 3.0/Debian: Best way to start over?

[Jeroen van Meeuwen (Kolab Systems)]

On 2012-12-18 12:21, ITSEF Admin wrote:
> On Monday 17 December 2012 19:10:41 Paul Klos wrote:
>> 3. apt-get install kolab
> 
> Or am I now overly paranoid and does "setup-kolab" deal with existing 
> DBs in
> a "useful" way?
> 

Just for the record:

setup-kolab will never, and nor will any other automated process a part 
of any package shipped as part of a Kolab repository, purge any data 
from a system with 1 or perhaps 2 exceptions:

- Cyrus IMAP purges deleted email messages and deleted IMAP folders 
from the filesystem every 69 days by default. Note that normally email 
messages and IMAP folders would be deleted (from the filesystem) 
immediately, so it's actually an improvement.

- setup-kolab is a bootstrap utility that assumes it is run on a clean 
system. Perhaps it assumes it runs on a clean system wrongly, but it is 
just not yet enhanced enough to be smart about anything. It won't test 
to see if the database 'kolab' already exists, it will simply execute 
the "CREATE DATABASE kolab;" MySQL query.

   As such, it replaces some configuration by configuration generated 
from templates (from /usr/share/kolab/templates/, if the equivalent 
template does not exist in /etc/kolab/templates/).

   It replaces only some configuration files because we have no current 
existing technology to "zoom in" on specific settings for such a 
configuration file format (/etc/roundcubemail/main.inc.php comes to 
mind).

   For other configuration files, setup-kolab *is* in fact able to "zoom 
in" on specific settings an therefore only change those settings that it 
actually cares about; /etc/postfix/main.cf comes to mind.

   So if you had, for example, SASL authentication to a smarthost for 
Postfix configured, setup-kolab should not be touching those settings.

Kind regards,

Jeroen van Meeuwen

-- 
Systems Architect, Kolab Systems AG

e: vanmeeuwen at kolabsys.com
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