Public SourceMage Discussion List

[Casey Harkins <charkins AT upl.cs.wisc.edu>]

I recently did a re-install (and will probably do another very soon w/ the
newest iso). Immediately after installing, I did a 'gaze alien' to see
what kind of files were not being tracked by sorcery straight from the
install. I compared this to the output after a system-update and rebuild
and it was about the same. Here is what I've noticed:

First of all, there is a list (/var/lib/sorcery/excluded) of
file/directories that get excluded/ignored when searching for aliens. I'm
not considering those here (until we get to perl).

DISCLAIMER: Most of what follows is taken directly from my notes, so there
is likely a lot of "this should be like this" type of language. I'm not
trying to say this is how it should be, just bringing up some ideas.


/etc:
   There are a number of alien files in the /etc directory, but they
   generally fall into a few categories.

   a) There are a number of files that are installed by default from
      the iso. Things like /etc/networks, /etc/hosts, /etc/services
      should all belong to either basesystem, or a new base-etc spell.
      Other files like /etc/xinetd and /etc/wgetrc should not be
      installed by default, rather they should be installed from their
      respective spells.

  b) There are some /etc/init.d files (halt.sh, rc, rcS, reboot.sh,
     signals.sh, sorcerer.sh) which should either be installed with
     base-etc, sysvinit or init.d (which would force init.d to be
     a required dependency).

  c) There are a few alien files in /etc that should probably be that
     way. These are things that are configured during the install
     (/etc/adjtime and /etc/sysconf/network/*).

  d) The /etc/sorcery structure should either be included in the excluded
     file list, or tracked in an install log for sorcery (see below).

gcc:
   Perhaps this is a fluke on my system, but the install log for gcc is
   empty (aside from the compile, install, md5sum and /usr/doc/gcc). This
   means that everything that gcc did install is listed as an alien.

perl:
   Much of the /usr/lib/perl5 directory structure is listed as alien
   files. I haven't looked into this much, but I see that for some
   reason '/usr/lib/perl*/*/*-linux-thread-multi/perllocal.pod' is
   listed in the excluded file list.

e2fsprogs and binutils:
   Both of these have /usr/doc directories that are listed as aliens.

sorcery:
   I understand that sorcery is no longer a spell, but I think it would
   be nice for it to still track the files it installs with a normal
   install log (so a 'gaze sorcery' will accurately list the files sorcery
   uses). This would solve the problem with '/etc/sorcery' not being
   tracked. I do however think that '/var/lib/sorcery/codex/*' should
   be listed in the excluded file list. NOTE: '/etc/sorcery/local' is
   already listed in the excluded file list.


Anyway, I'm curious as to what others think. I'm willing to put together
some basic spells to hold the basic set of /etc files, as well as submit
changes to spells which should handle installing their own config (xinetd,
wget).

I'm also planning on creating a base-dev spell which will create the /dev
file structure with proper ownership and permissions. If someone has
experience with devfs over dev they'd like to share, a second base-devfs
spell could be used as an alternative to base-dev. From what I understand,
this would depend on devfsd.

-casey