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From: frank@croton.enet.dec.com (Frank Wortner)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.ultrix
Subject: Re: Ultrix 4.1!
Message-ID: <1788@riscy.enet.dec.com>
Date: 12 Nov 90 14:38:11 GMT
References: <1990Nov11.225919.13038@comp.vuw.ac.nz> <3738@vela.acs.oakland.edu> <3739@vela.acs.oakland.edu> <PCG.90Nov10180425@odin.cs.aber.ac.uk>
Sender: newsdaemon@riscy.enet.dec.com
Reply-To: frank@croton.enet.dec.com (Frank Wortner)
Organization: Digital Equipment Corporation
Lines: 31


> I would for example be quite happy with
> a tar file that I could load into a seperate directory somewhere, and
manually
> move the relevant files across. I would be quite happy with some upgrade
> software subsets - as long as I knew in advance which files were going to be
> overwritten.

It is possible to do this with media in "setld" format.  You just have
to remember
that each of the subsets on a tape or CD are basically (possibly compressed)
tar archives.  I'm simplifying things a bit:  there is quite a bit of
extra information
associated with each subset in the form of file permission/checksum lists,
shell scripts, etc., but for our purposes, it's sufficient to say that
the subsets
are just tar archives.

You can extract the archives, either individually or all together, by using the
"-x" option to setld.  This will leave you with one or more possibly compressed
tar archives and associated information.  You can then do what you want with
them.

If you want more information about setld, check out the "Guide to Preparing
Software for Distribution on ULTRIX Systems."  If you want still more
information,
you can check out the source:  setld is just an elaborate shell script.

Have fun!

						Frank