File Systems.

[Robert S. Thau]

mats loman writes:
 > Example: The package super-database contains 6 binary executables used to
 > mantail the super-database. The operator tries to find out which
 > executables it is and does ls /usr/bin and get a list of 1417 files. How
 > easy is it to find out which?

If we're presuming that the system has *some* package management
facilities, it's as easy as "rpm -ql super-database | grep bin", or
the equivalent using native package management facilities if they
aren't RPM-based.

The inverse problem, "which of my several hundred packages does
/usr/bin/frotzit belong to?", is "rpm -qf /usr/bin/frotzit" (or, once
again, the equivalent using the native package manager).

Verifying that the file still has the same MD5 hash as in the original
package is left as an (easy) exercise for the reader...

Since the whole purpose of the LSB, as I understand it, is to specify
a set of basic resources that third-party packages (commercial and
otherwise) can rely on, it doesn't bug me to assume that the system
will have a package manager that's strong enough to handle the basics.
Particularly when you also need a package manager to get even
approximate answers to more important questions like, "if I remove
/usr/bin/frotzit, what other stuff on the system is going to break?"

rst