advice for wipe and reinstall

[Ryan Schmidt]

On Mar 21, 2014, at 16:24, Terry Barnum <terry at dop.com> wrote:

> /opt/local/etc is where I thought port configurations would live but wasn't sure. Do you think it would be best after reformatting and installing 10.8 to install macports, then copy /opt/local/etc from backups, then reinstall the ports?

/opt/local/etc is a popular location for configs, but there’s no way to guarantee that ports don’t use configs elsewhere.

If you’re just going to reinstall the same version of OS, there doesn’t seem to be any need for you to uninstall / reinstall any ports. If you’re going to upgrade to a new OS, then the Migration instructions apply.

One way to see where configs (and all other ports not registered to any port) are located is to “sudo port -f deactivate active”. Warning: this will deactivate all your ports! If you already had some inactive ports, it can then be difficult to reactivate those ports unless you save a list of them elsewhere. But if you’re going to wipe the drive anyway, no harm in doing this step first. After deactivating all ports, the files remaining in /opt/local will be files not belonging to any ports, which would include your configs. It would also include the basic MacPorts infrastructure, and the archives of your installed ports and some other data in /opt/local/var/macports.