On Wed, Dec 31, 2014, at 08:48 PM, mar...@martinbrandenburg.com wrote: > Adam Wolk <adam.w...@koparo.com> wrote: > > > Hi misc@ > > > > I have a question regarding the what(1) command. In one interview I saw > > Theo mentioning the what(1) utility: > > > > > Two numbers exist for every component of OpenBSD. One number is the > > > release that the piece came in, ie. 2.8. > > > > > > The other number exists in each source file that was built. And that > > > number is also in each binary that was built > > > from those files. You can use the what(1) command to determine the > > > revisions of source files which make up > > > each binary. > > > > The way I understood this I could use the what utility on a binary file > > in the base OpenBSD system to see exactly which CVS revisions of > > specific files composed into the resulting binary. > > > > I tried using the tool on several base utilities like ssh, adventure, ls > > etc. None of them produced any output except the executable name itself. > > > > I took a look at the source and the manpage and saw that what this > > utility really does is stepping through the binary in search of the > > revision markup then printing out the stuff it found. > > > > I tried the utility on all the files in /usr/bin/*, /bin/* and > > /usr/lib/* and found that the only ones producing output (actual > > revision markers and source files) are plain text shell scripts. > > Additionally output is also produced for the kernel files (/bsd, > > /bsd.sp, /bsd.rd). > > > > >From the manpage > > > > > The what utility is compliant with the X/Open System Interfaces option of > > > the IEEE Std 1003.1-2008 (???POSIX.1???) specification. > > > > I understand that this is part of POSIX but my question is: Is standard > > compliance the sole purpose of the existence of this tool or was it > > actually able to produce output for regular system binaries back in the > > old days? In case of the latter - is there some kind of additional > > stripping or a build step change that causes the information no longer > > being embedded in the executables? > > > > I'm not saying that something is broken, but really interested to know > > what changed. Especially after seeing this URL > > http://prefetch.net/blog/index.php/2005/05/17/fix-for-solaris-ssh-client-hangs/ > > showing the output of what(1) ran against OpenSSH on Solaris. > > > > In case this matters. I'm running a i386 snapshot from 27-Dec-2014. > > > > Regards, > > -- > > Adam Wolk > > adam.w...@koparo.com > > The tools work as you found, but there's nothing in the binaries to find > anymore. > > They went through and removed the RCS/SCCS strings. See the commit > message here > > > http://cvsweb.openbsd.org/cgi-bin/cvsweb/src/bin/cat/cat.c?rev=1.20&content-type=text/x-cvsweb-markup > > Though CVS does still update the RCS string in the comment at the top of > the file. > > I don't know what use what(1)/ident(1) still have in base other than > historically being there. > > -- Martin
Thanks Martin, you satisfied my curiosity - hope you have a happy new year :) Regards, -- Adam Wolk adam.w...@koparo.com
