[UFO Chicago] dpkg --reconfigure

[Peter A. Peterson II]

Quoting Nate Riffe:
> What I really need it to do is reinstall the configuration files.  For
> instance, /etc/init.d/single is installed by sysvinit as a configuration
> file.  According to the dpkg man page, unpacking the guts of a package and
> unpacking defaut configs are separate and the latter is part of the
> "configure" step.  dpkg-reconfigure is not reinstalling config files, only
> asking the questions over again.  What I'm looking for is some way to get
> the default configs out of a deb and back where they belong.

Well, then you should just get the debs from your apt-cache, explode
them, and copy the files over yourself. This is essentially like scping
them from a machine running the same tree, but doesn't require a friend.

The wise Sean Neakums, director of Overseas Hootenanny, gave me a quick
little tour of the .deb architecture. 

It's just an ar archive with gzipped tarballs inside. SO, get the
package that has the files you need, and do this to it:


mkdir somedir
mv some.deb somedir
ar -x some.deb
This will create
 control.tar.gz and
 data.tar.gz

The stuff you're looking for is in data.tar.gz. 

So, tar -xvvzf it.

pedro

PS: There's some debian tool that does this nicely and makes a directory
for you, but I can't think of what it is.