Chapter 5. Managing Kickstart and Configuration Files Using authconfig

The --update option updates all of the configuration files with the configuration changes. There are a couple of alternative options with slightly different behavior:

Additionally, authconfig can be used to back up and restore previous configurations. All archives are saved to a unique subdirectory in the /var/lib/authconfig/ directory. For example, the --savebackup option gives the backup directory as 2011-07-01:

authconfig --savebackup=2011-07-01

[root@server ~]# authconfig --savebackup=2011-07-01

This backs up all of the authentication configuration files beneath the /var/lib/authconfig/backup-2011-07-01 directory.

Any of the saved backups can be used to restore the configuration using the --restorebackup option, giving the name of the manually saved configuration:

authconfig --restorebackup=2011-07-01

[root@server ~]# authconfig --restorebackup=2011-07-01

Additionally, authconfig automatically makes a backup of the configuration before it applies any changes (with the --update option). The configuration can be restored from the most recent automatic backup, without having to specify the exact backup, using the --restorelastbackup option.