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From: petersor@egr.msu.edu (Rick Peterson)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.hp
Subject: Re: HP-UX features
Message-ID: <1991Jun3.205949.26868@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu>
Date: 3 Jun 91 20:59:49 GMT
References: <1991May24.152621.9993@msuinfo.cl.msu.edu> <1730097@hpcndjdz.CND.HP.COM>
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Reply-To: petersor@egr.msu.edu (Rick Peterson)
Organization: Michigan State University
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Originator: petersor@frith.egr.msu.edu

In article <1730097@hpcndjdz.CND.HP.COM> jason@hpcndjdz.CND.HP.COM (Jason Zions) writes:
>>Have you actually looked at what update format is?  At least since 7.0 (and
>>from memory earlier on the 800's) it is just a tar file with a standard
>>file structure.
>>
>>I often just go in and tar chunks off without having to get near update.
>
>Very risky; there's more in the tar files than just bits. You need to
>execute the various customize scripts as well, in the correct order. In any

This is the problem that led to the "complaint" about software being 
distributed in update format (actually the complaint is really that update
forces the system to be in single user mode).

We tried a couple times quite a while ago to just read the tar files.  We
only discovered later that some problems we were having were due to the
fact that there were "various customize scripts" hidden away that didn't
get executed.

I have no doubt that using tar to extract the files in some cases works just
fine, but it can lead to some real problems.  The problem is that you only find
out after it is too late about the cases where it doesn't work.

Rick Peterson			|	petersor@egr.msu.edu
College of Engineering 		| 	(517) 355-7435
Michigan State University	|	

The opinions expressed above are mine alone.