Women in Technology

Article:		Excerpt from Linux Cookbook, Part 1
Subject:		Some Corrections
Date:		2004-12-09 23:44:29
From:		shlomif
The -v option for grep does not "turn on verbosity". What it does is invert the match and only display things that don't match. -e '^' does not mean exclude the following directory. It specifies a pattern to match, that happen to match at the beginning of the line (hence the "^"). Several -e's specify several patterns. In regards, to the solution proposed for 4.3, it is pretty brain-dead. Scanning the entire file-system twice is going to take a long time if it is very crowded. Furthermore, if something else is done there (like a cron-job or a different user handling his files), it may have some false positives. Generally, what I do to install programs, is either install from RPM (or .DEB or whatever), or use autoconf's --prefix option to install everything under its own directory. "slay" is interesting. "keychain" is also interesting.

Showing messages 1 through 3 of 3.

• Some Corrections
  2006-05-27 07:09:30  robhogg [View]
  
  

  What has not been commented on in the follow-ups to shlomif's post, is the (absoloutely correct) point that the explanations given for the flags used with grep are erroneous and misleading. This is especially serious in a book aimed at people who are not veryexperienced with Linux.

  
  
  

  I am surprised not only that it slipped past the proofreaders but that O'Reilly have this on their website to promote the book. I had been thinking of getting it, but seeing such a sloppy error has made me reconsider.

• Some Corrections
  2005-01-13 10:52:46  SlowBurn [View]
  
  
  Did you read the preface in the book. It isn't really meant for advanced users, but people new to the OS. While the methods describe are not the most optimal, they are easy to follow and understand.
  
  I think that is the point of it really. Once the reader has built a base of understanding they can dig out the most optimal way to do something and comprehend what it is that they are doing and why.

• Some Corrections
  2004-12-10 10:10:43  Fred_Arnold [View]
  
  
  "Brain dead"? No it isn't. I use almost the same method for generating file lists for source installs, because many makefiles do not include an "uninstall" target, so it saves a lot of time when I want to remove a program. I also exclude mounted network shares. Sometimes I will install everything in a single directory using the --prefix option for ./configure, for an application that I know I'm probably going to test and remove, but that presents its own problems- like program documentation that assumes certain file locations, so you have to spend more time making sure config files and commands reflect the correct filepaths. And it puts files in illogical locations, instead of config files in /etc, logfiles in /var, and so forth.
  
  Package installs really don't pertain to source installs. :)