At 11:12 AM 4/9/99 -0500, Philip Guenther wrote:
Apache builds on just about everything because someone has stuck lines
in there for just about everything. If a significantly different new
version of an OS comes out, it'll make the wrong decisions. Several
versions of apache refused to use the regexp code that came with
Solaris 2.5 because previous versions of Solaris were broken.
No real harm in this if it was getting by before. Eventually, of course,
these things get fixed.
Tests are a good way to do things, but in some cases knowing the OS
type and version is a plus. The best approach is probably
a combination of the two.
They don't belong in the program itself, but it's perfectly permissible
to put them in Makefiles and/or other preconfiguration programs. And
it is possible to do SOME testing of filesystem layout.... I've done it
in my own installation programs. You can tell a lot by checking what's
in /sbin, /usr/sbin, /bin, /usr/bin, /usr/local, /usr/local/bin,
Yeah, I've written those sorts of scripts too. You notice how they
keep growing, and how annoying they are when they guess wrong?
Only if done badly.
The procmail autoconf scripts
already look to see where sendmail is; why not other things?
That's done for two reasons:
1) sendmail has historically been placed in locations not in the
default PATH; and
2) sendmail might not be installed, in which case $SENDMAIL should be
"/usr/bin/smail" or something like that.
The same might be said of other things. I say, it pays to make things
as easy as possible for the user. No sysadmin can afford to be the
ultimate expert on EVERYTHING he or she uses, no matter how diligent
he or she is.
Tripwire is an argument _for_ placing the ETCRC in /etc: the ETCRC
should be watched as closely as any other mail configuration file.
It's not like the procmail installation touches the file.
True. But the addition of procmail (it isn't installed when you first
put the OS on the system) shouldn't trigger alarms. /usr/local/etc
is a good place for the rc file. (Frankly, other programs, including
SSH, should put it there as well by default.)
It doesn't matter how easy doing this for one or three platforms is.
It matters how difficult doing this for 100 platforms is. I'm not
going to take procmail down that road.
You don't have to do it for all 100. Fall back on rules and tests if
you don't get an exact match.
--Brett