bin owns stuff (was: Installing 4.3-Tahoe on a VAX)

[Rahul Dhesi]

In article <3224 at geac.UUCP> drew at lethe.UUCP (Drew Sullivan) writes:
>Yes, the system owner.  I for one run a different copy of sh then the stock
>one.  Sh is owned by local (its my box, I can changed sh if I want to).  In
>this way I can tell 6 months down the road what are local updated versions of
>files vs the stock (bin) distibuted files.

A technique I have used to quickly identify which binaries have been
locally replaced is to rename the old one to something recognizable,
replace it with a new one, and link the new one to a long name I can
identify.  E.g.:

     move /bin/mail to /bin/mail.original
     install new /bin/mail, link it so /bin/mail.from.Usenet.15.jan.1988

(Under System V you are unfortunately limited to 14-char names.)  When
there is any doubt, just do "ls -li" and identify what is linked to
what by glancing at file sizes and finally comparing inode numbers.

The above allows you to have several local updates, and not get
confused as you might if the only identifying feature was the name of
the owner.

(Ideally all binaries would have descriptive SCCS strings embedded.)
-- 
Rahul Dhesi         UUCP:  <backbones>!{iuvax,pur-ee,uunet}!bsu-cs!dhesi