Re: misc/40977: /var/backups/work/device.current is overly sensitive to ls(1) columnar alignment

[Taylor R Campbell <campbell%mumble.net@localhost>]

   Date: Sun, 29 Mar 2009 18:40:04 +0000 (UTC)
   From: David Holland <dholland-bugs%netbsd.org@localhost>

   On Sat, Mar 07, 2009 at 04:25:00AM +0000, Taylor R Campbell wrote:
   >    Any change in the columnar alignment in the listing of a
   >    single device in /var/backups/work/device.current as generated
   >    by /etc/security causes every other line to change.  This
   >    makes the RCS history accumulate excessively, about a thousand
   >    times faster than the useful information is accumulating, and
   >    renders the diffs useless for the naked eye.

   Does setting "diff_options=-uw" in security.conf produce suitable
   diffs?

Sorry for the late reply.  Setting diff_options doesn't change what
gets recorded in the RCS file; it affects only the messages that the
security script sends by mail.  Here's a patch to the security script
to make it do what I want, by using the -exec option to find(1) rather
than xargs(1).  Unfortunately, this slows the security script down a
great deal by causing it to fork many more times, but it does reduce
informationless clutter, which causes backups to use much less disk
space and which makes them more useful to humans.

Perhaps find(1) should be extended with an option to set the `ls(1)
flags' that it uses (emulates) for `find -ls', which is faster than
either `find -exec ls' or xargs(1).

--- security.~1~        2009-08-03 15:00:12.000000000 +0000
+++ security    2009-08-03 15:01:09.000000000 +0000
@@ -673,8 +673,8 @@
        find / $ignexpr \
            \( \( -perm -u+s -a ! -type d \) -o \
               \( -perm -g+s -a ! -type d \) -o \
-              -type b -o -type c \) -print0 | \
-       xargs -0 ls -ldgTq | sort +9 > $LIST
+              -type b -o -type c \) \
+           -exec ls -ldgTq \{\} \; | sort +9 > $LIST
 
        ) 2> $OUTPUT