On Mon, Jan 14, 2002 at 05:57:24PM -0500, Wayne babbled thus:
> Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2002 17:57:24 -0500
> From: Wayne <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Reply-To: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.75 [en] (WinNT; U)
> To: Kim Goldenberg <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
> Subject: package magic
>
> As part of the rpm packaging system, rpm maintains a database of installed
> packages. That's why the updates can be tracked and that's why uninstalls will
> work well with rpm. It will also manage upgrades and you can choose whether to
> retain your older configuration files and settings. That's all part of
> "packaging" intelligence.
>
> Not so with tar. With tar there is no such tracking, no such database, because
> tar has nothing to do with "packaging" it's only an archiving program. tar
> will give you files and then you choose what to do with them. Many tarballs
> for software include scripts to do an installation but there is no "package
> management".
Not with tar per se. But again, Slackware's package management system
DOES use .tgz's, and it does keep a record of installed files - in
fact, the packages records are simply text files in /var/log/packages,
which, for simplicity's sake, are very easy to manipulate. KISS - Keep
It Simple, Stupid. :)
>
> Often I'll do an rpm UNinstall before I install a later version. That keeps
> things clean. However, be careful if you want to maintain the old
> configuration settings. Those will get blown away unless your careful.
What about the 20 packages which rely on the package you're
uninstalling? And the 40 more which rely on those?
>
> Kim write: " It would be nice to have something to keep track of what you
> have on your system without spending 20-30 minutes to find the simple
> information and who-knows-how-long for the more difficult ones."
'grep'
>
> Wayne says:
> Might be nice, but let's not turn Linux into windows. There are utilities in
> Linux that act like primitives that can acomplish those kinds of things.
> 'find' and 'grep' and 'diff' come to mind. Storing a find list (and adding
> options to give file attributes to the list) can go a long way toward tracking
> what was on your system at a given time. However, it's still not a packaging
> database like what rpm has.
*cough*
>
> I wrote a script to take a snapshot of my configuration filesystem which can
> be easily compared against snapshots at different times. This could easily be
> done with /usr /lib and /usr/lib to track what has been installed and when.
> That could be a good presentation for some meeting.
>
*snip*
> Wayne
--
Mike Edwards
Brainbench certified Master Linux Administrator
http://www.brainbench.com/transcript.jsp?pid=158188
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