Subject: Re: `use sup' not tar balls ....
To: David Brownlee <D.K.Brownlee@city.ac.uk>
From: Duncan McEwan <duncan@comp.vuw.ac.nz>
List: current-users
Date: 01/16/1995 12:12:43
> Nighty (or weekly) sun-lamp runs (int the src dir) 'find . ! -type d -ls'
> into a file ...  You could run 'cksum `find . ! -type d -ls`', but that won't
> have timestamps or sizes.. combining both would give the best for the more
> paranoid.

The mtree(1) command could be used to provide all the required information
quite easily, and also provides an easy way for the person downloading the
specification to generate a list of the files that are different.

Note that if timestamps were to be included in the specification, you would
need to use an ftp client that supported preservation of timestamps on
downloaded files (ie, ncftp).

Duncan

PS: I do use sup to keep my sources (more or less) up to date, but I might
still find it useful if I could periodically download such a file to check the
integrity of my sources.