[SunHELP] Solaris package removal question

[Eric LeBlanc]

On Wed, 25 Aug 2004, Sheldon T. Hall wrote:

> Eric LeBlanc says ...
>
> > Well, do ls -l /path/to/perl and take the creation time of
> > this program,
> > and do a find, something like:
> >
> > find / -time time_date_of_your_perl_program > /tmp/allfilesfromperl
> >
> > check in "man find", I can't recall what is the exact
> > parameter (I think -ctime )
>
> Although some doco says ctime is "creation time," it's actually the time of
> the last change to the inode.  This may or may not be the creation time of
> the file.  UNIX doesn't seem to save the actual creation time anywhere, a
> design blunder IMHO.

You're right, I forgot this little detail. It's true that the ctime is
the last modification of the inode, and it's the same behavior in all Unix
system, believe me.

We should use the 'mtime', it's more accurate, because it's based on a
modification of this file.

>
> I think find's various time operators (atime, ctime, mtime) only operate on
> whote numbers of days, too, not actual dates or times.

Right, but you can build a complex expression with find, but it's may be
very ugly (with -newer, -mtime and !).

So, May I suggest something?  Create a mini script perl such as:

-----------------------------------------------------------------------
#!/usr/bin/perl -w
#($dev, $ino, $mode, $nlink, $uid, $gid, $rdev, $size, $atime, $mtime,
# $ctime, $blocksize, $blocks) = stat($filename);

 $mtime = (stat("/path/to/perl"))[9];

 while (<STDIN>)
 {
   chomp;
   $mtime_tmp = (stat($_))[9];

   # let us a delay of of +- 30 seconds, or take a better delay
   if ( ($mtime < $mtime_tmp[9]+30) && ($mtime > $mtime_tmp[9]-30) )
     { print "$_\n"; }
 }
-------------------------------------------------------------------------

save it, and do this following command:

find / -print | /path/to/this/script > /tmp/files

How do you think ?

> Which is not to say the suggestion above is useless; it's not.  It's a good
> place to start, since it will point to at least some of the files, and they
> are likely to be in directories that have other perl files, or at least
> files whose archiving won't hurt anything.
>
> -Shel


E.
--
Eric LeBlanc
inouk at igt.net
--------------------------------------------------
UNIX is user friendly.
It's just selective about who its friends are.
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