[H-GEN] Checking file ownership on installed debian packages.

[David Seikel]

On Sun, 10 Oct 2010 11:25:27 +1000 Russell Stuart
<russell-humbug at stuart.id.au> wrote:

> On Sun, 2010-10-10 at 07:01 +1000, David Seikel wrote:
> > I recall from my RPM days there was a command to check all installed
> > packages, reporting any that had owner, group, or permissions that
> > where different from what the package said they should be.  It could
> > also report checksum differences.  Seems that in the debian world,
> > there is only debsums for reporting checksum differences, which does
> > not help with the metadata.
> > 
> > Anybody got a cluebat to hit me with?
> 
> From what I know of Debian and RPM, there is no easy way to do this.
> RPM packages store the meta information (ie mode, user, group) in a
> separate file which is retained on the system after you install the
> package.  In Debian that same information comes from the tar ball that
> contains the files to be installed, and that tar ball is typically
> removed from the system one the install is done.
> 
> So the simplest option is probably to reinstall the effected packages.
> This isn't so hard.  My first approximation would be something like
> this:

It looks like most of the system was um, unrooted, and having recently
reduced my 'net plan, I was not looking forward to sucking down another
3GB of data again.

The solution I went with was to intall the base system from CD onto a
spare partition I had already set aside for installing test OSes, then
do a comparison of the metadata with this fresh install.  That got me
out of the deepest hot water, and I'll take care of the rest on a case
by case basis as problems crop up.  This is a new install that I'm
putting through it's paces anyway, so stuff will get tested.

I'll see what bandwidth I have left over at the end of the month and
maybe reinstall the lot, or upgrade to Ubuntu 10.10, the upgrade should
fix things.

-- 
A big old stinking pile of genius that no one wants
coz there are too many silver coated monkeys in the world.
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