Re: [rdiff-backup-users] rh7.3 and debian etch

[Joshua Penix]

Keith Edmunds wrote:

> RH7.3 is four or five years old. New RPMs would need later versions of
> Python and also librsync, which in turn would be likely to need newer
> libc versions (welcome to RedHat Package Management). My suggestion

Well, those are the downsides of binary packages regardless of 
distribution.  But you overstate the situation in this particular case. 
 RH7.3 has python2.2 packages available inside the distribution, and 
librsync and librsync-devel can be easily brought up to v0.97 from DAG's 
repository (http://dag.wieers.com/packages/librsync/).  No libc updates 
necessary.  Once those packages are in place, getting rdiff-backup 
v1.0.4 is as simple as downloading the rdiff-backup-1.0.4-1.src.rpm and 
executing a --rebuild on it.

Notice I didn't mention v1.1.5.  I realize that's what's on the Debian 
box, but that's not currently a stable version that I'd recommend using 
in production anyway.  It also doesn't happen to get along with the 
Python version that comes with RedHat 7.3 (it complains about reserved 
keywords).  I haven't played with the v1.1 development versions enough, 
but I assume this means that the new branch requires at least Python 2.3.

So if it's too hard to get Debian to downgrade to 1.0.4, then you can 
add one step to the above process to get 1.1.5 on RedHat - download and 
install a newer Python.  It's not too hard, the Python project provides 
source RPMs on their site that you can --rebuild and then install.  They 
co-exist peacefully with other already-installed versions, and the 
librsync RPM --rebuild should pick up what it needs.

> would be to upgrade the server; as it is, it's likely to have many
> security vulnerabilities. If that's not an option, it would be far

If it's an unmaintained 7.3 system, then yes there are security 
vulnerabilities.  But if he doesn't want to upgrade the entire server, 
he can look to http://www.fedoralegacy.org/ to get all the necessary 
security updates and ongoing support.

Hope the above info helps... I know it's not as simple as "download 
this, run one command and off you go," but I just wanted it to be known 
that it's not a lost cause either. :)

--
Joshua Penix                                http://www.binarytribe.com
Binary Tribe           Linux Integration Services & Network Consulting