From owner-freebsd-stable Wed Jul 31 15:20:39 2002 Delivered-To: freebsd-stable@freebsd.org Received: from mx1.FreeBSD.org (mx1.FreeBSD.org [216.136.204.125]) by hub.freebsd.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id F239B37B400 for ; Wed, 31 Jul 2002 15:20:35 -0700 (PDT) Received: from malasada.lava.net (malasada.lava.net [64.65.64.17]) by mx1.FreeBSD.org (Postfix) with ESMTP id 96E9443E42 for ; Wed, 31 Jul 2002 15:20:35 -0700 (PDT) (envelope-from cliftonr@lava.net) Received: from localhost (2576 bytes) by malasada.lava.net; Wed, 31 Jul 2002 12:20:34 -1000 (HST) via sendmail [stdio] id for Date: Wed, 31 Jul 2002 12:20:34 -1000 From: Clifton Royston To: stable@FreeBSD.org Subject: New install options -C and -S in combination? Message-ID: <20020731122034.A14334@lava.net> Mime-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii Content-Disposition: inline User-Agent: Mutt/1.2.5.1i Sender: owner-freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG Precedence: bulk List-ID: List-Archive: (Web Archive) List-Help: (List Instructions) List-Subscribe: List-Unsubscribe: X-Loop: FreeBSD.ORG The -C (conditional?) option to install sounds close to what I have been wanting in some respects; so does -S (safe copy). Unfortunately the man page documentation is not quite clear enough for me to understand how these work and whether they can be used together. 1) If install with the -C option finds the destination and target files are identical, will it actually rewrite the data on top of the existing one as the man page seems to imply? Or does it recognize this as a no-op and do nothing? If install -C finds the destination files are not identical, will it copy the new contents on top of the target file in place (preserving the inode though changing the modification time)? 2) Can the -S option be combined with the -C option to ensure safe (atomic) updates of those files which need to be updated? Would this have the desired behavior that files which are identical are left alone, but files which must be updated are updated atomically? This last question is much on my mind at the moment, as we accidentally crashed a running server yesterday, apparently due to an install script for OpenSSL doing a non-atomic update of its libssl while it was in use. (This was not a FreeBSD system, FWIW.) I would like to have some combination of install options which has the following properties: 1) Files which must be changed due to a difference are updated atomically, so as to have the least likelihood of disrupting running processes; 2) Files for which there is no difference between the destination and target have both their inode and their modification time preserved, to result in the minimum delta for a file intrusion detection system such as Tripwire. (This would also be helpful in generating a list of what binary updates necessarily resulted from an "installworld".) I would wish for "install -C -S" to satisfy those properties, but it is not clear to me from the man pages whether it does. -- Clifton -- Clifton Royston -- LavaNet Systems Architect -- cliftonr@lava.net "What do we need to make our world come alive? What does it take to make us sing? While we're waiting for the next one to arrive..." - Sisters of Mercy To Unsubscribe: send mail to majordomo@FreeBSD.org with "unsubscribe freebsd-stable" in the body of the message