So I finally got a complete source tree on my machine, about which I'm
very happy.   I did this partially with sup, and partially with ftp -
sup is really bad at getting an initial distribution over a lossy
connection.   I've lost my internet connectivity for more than an hour
three times in the past four days, so you can see what I mean by
lossy.

When I got tired of screwing around with SUP, I just unpacked all the
appropriate tar files, faked a last.allsrc and when.allsrc file, and
ran sup again to update those files that had changed.   Imagine my
surprise in looking through the output of sup to discover that IT
DELETED MY ENTIRE WORKING KERNEL SOURCE TREE!!!!!

I still have the new source tree, of course, complete with appropriate
updates, but the working tree is GONE!   Interestingly, I still have
the binaries from the working tree, and also some .orig files and a
few new files that I added, but everything else is GONE.

The working sys tree was under the same tree that I'm supping, as for
that matter was an old but complete kernel source tree.   The layout
looks like this:

README.export-control   ftp-src/                supkit/
diff.out                src/                    supkit.tar.gz
file-list               sup/                    sys/
ftp/                    sup-src-old/

The src directory contains the supped sources, sup contains the sup
working files, supkit contains the sources and binaries for the
version of sup I'm currently using, ftp-src contains a complete old
NetBSD tree, and sys contains the smoking remains of almost a month's
off-again, on-again hacking on the kernel.

Why did sup delete my working tree?   Why didn't it delete stuff in
other directories in the same area?   I don't know.   I think what
happened is that I left off a level of path in the last.allsrc file,
and the working kernel tree was the only thing that matches the paths
therein.

Anyway, heed my sad lesson.  Don't try to fool mother sup.  And if you
do, for god's sake make sure that there's nothing in the area that it
considers its own that you care about, other than the files it's
updating.

Sigh.   Now to go back in and pick up the pieces...   How I wish I had
a backup device...

			       _MelloN_


--
Ted Lemon		      Wells Fargo Bank, Information Protection Division
mellon@ipd.wellsfargo.com					+1 415 477 5045