Subject: Re: Bug#3422: termcap entry too long error

From: Ian Jackson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 1 Jul 96 02:59 BST

Dale Scheetz writes ("Re: Bug#3422: termcap entry too long error"):
[...]
>   However, it seems to me that if
> dpkg made some kind of running log entry of it's activities, or could
> time-stamp it's installations, debugging of these two problems could
> provide adequate answers to "who did what to whom".
[...]

See
 - Bug#957
 - /usr/doc/dpkg/WISHLIST

Ian.

---

From: Ian Jackson <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 1 Jul 96 03:23 BST

Dale Scheetz writes ("Re: Bug#3422: termcap entry too long error"):
> On 28 Jun 1996, Darren/Torin/Who Ever... wrote:
...
> > This would be *really* good.  It'd be nice if there was also a verbose
> > option that listed exactly what files where installed where.  Not
> > necessary but rather handy...
> 
> I believe this information is already available in
> /var/lib/dpkg/info/*.list.

He was talking, I think, about a log that would record not just which
package dpkg had most recently installed a file from, but give a
complete history.

Darren, do you have any idea how large such a log would get how
quickly ?  Even if the information in it were very minimal and brief
you could expect it to grow by at least a megabyte every time you did
an upgrade ...

The contents of the /var/lib/dpkg/info/*.list files come to 622K on my
system.  Imagine recording that much new data, plus timestamps and
info saying whether the file was installed or removed &c and the
package name, added to the log every time your system goes through a
new release generation.  You'd be adding 50-100K or so every time you
upgraded ncurses, for a start ...

Ian.