To Nobody in particular:
Confucius is attributed with stating: "The beginning of wisdom is to call things by their proper name" I suggest that "sysclean" is not the name of the code inside this utility. The sysupgrade utility actually upgrades my system and fw_update updates my firmware. sysclean does not clean anything - it makes suggestions for a specific type of user (not really all users). It may have aspirations of sysclean(ing), but it is not there today and maybe should have a different name. Based on this conversation thread, any suggestion I might make would sound humorous, so I will defer possible names to others more invested in the code The sysupgrade utility has different modes of operation with the -s option. Maybe the final sysclean will have a similar option? I do not use sysclean. After reading this thread it appears I am correct to not use it because I'm not running from snapshots (and don't have as much to clean). When hearing discussion about sysclean I felt like an outsider for not using it, along with sysupgrade. Now, I better understand sysclean's intended purpose. Clearly sysclean is a difficult task and if anyone could produce a version I would use (some day) it would be this group! 0.02 - Thanks for reading On 5/4/22 07:36, Theo de Raadt wrote: > Sebastien Marie <sema...@online.fr> wrote: > >> a package could use old libraries, and such libraries will not be listed by >> sysclean. > the sysclean manual page claims that it correctly identifies "obsolete > filenames". > > Obsolete, adj. > > 1.no longer produced or used; out of date. > > But this is innaccurate. By your own admission, the test it performs to > decide on whether a file is "not used" is flawed. > > Yet, people continue to use rm. > >> yes it will. but as sysclean only inspects files under directories >> controlled by >> the admin, it means that the administrator created such files and so they >> know >> what it is doing. > The "controlled by admin" file does not exist by default, so normally this > will look in a lot of system locations, and falsely identify unused files. > > Let me be clear: the program is lying to the user. It is documented vaguely > to hide that what the program does is not truthful. It says "obsolete" all > over the place, but no actual test for that condition is performed. > >>> And then someone will rm -f `sysclean`. >> sysclean isn't designed for such usage. > Yet, that is precisely what numerous people have done. > >> I could saying the same about 'ls'. Someone will rm -f `ls` and a file named >> "/somewhere/matchingpattern/\n/etc/spwd.db" will do bad thing. > Yet, noone is doing that. > >> Should we add -0 to ls ? or remove it because of possible stupid usage ? >> >>> I think sysclean is below the normal standard for our group. >> Yes. ls too. it could hurt users which might call rm -f `ls`. </sarcasm> > > Clear you don't care that people are getting hurt by this code you wrote. >
