NAME

packageadmin − install or remove software packages

SYNOPSIS

/usr/sbin/packageadmin

DESCRIPTION

Packageadmin carries out the installation and removal of software packages.  A package is a collection of related programs and data files (for example the X Window system, its tools and associated libraries). 

A package is saved as a tar(1) archive, held on floppy discs in dsplit(1) format − but packageadmin takes care of all the details of installation/removal. 

Packageadmin is a menu driven program. The operations available are:

−List packages installed. 

−Install a package. 

−Remove a package (optionally saving it to floppy disc). 

Prompts generated by packageadmin look like this:

informative string (a/b/c) [c]>>

This means that you can select one of three options (a, b or c); if you type <return> c will be used as the default. 

Most keyboard input is acted upon immediatly, but prompts with the options (Y/N) (generated by dsplit(1)) require the user to press <return> after responding. 

IMPLEMENTATION DETAILS

Programs and data used by packageadmin are held in the directory /packages.

Information about installed packages is held in the directory /packages/contents. Each subdirectory of contents describes one package, whose name is the same as the name of the directory. 
The contents of this directory (with optional components in brackets) are:

files.Zthe files making up the package (ascii text, white space separated; compressed using compress(1))

versiona file containing information about the package, conventionally: package_name Version version_string Displayed to the the user to give more information about the package contents.

[sizes]a file describing the disc space occupancy of the package
In the present implementation this contains two lines: USRNEEDED=<size in kbytes needed in usr partition>
ROOTNEEDED=<size in kbytes needed in root partition> If not present, no size checks will be performed (package will appear to have zero size).

[install]a shell script for carring out additional installation operations.  Executed after the package files have been placed on the disc. 

[remove]a shell script for carring out additional remove operations.  Executed after package files have been removed from the disc. 

Archived packages are kept as dsplit(1) tar(1) archives, the contents are:

/packages/contents/package_name/∗
{all the files from /packages/contents/package_name/files}

The title of the dsplit(1) disc sequence is constructed from the name and the disc space requirements of the  package. It will look like:

Package: yp ROOTNEEDED=74 USRNEEDED=649

There is a program /packages/packagesize which will add up the needs (in terms of kbytes) for the root and usr areas, for a set of files. 

packagesize <file list>
packagesize -f <file containing file list>
packagesize -f - {read the filelist from stdin}

Output, on stdout, is suitable contents for the "sizes" file.  Any file whose pathname begins in /usr or usr is included in the usr size. All others are contained in the root size. 

SEE ALSO

dsplit(1), tar(1)
 

4th Berkeley Distribution  —  Revision 1.3 of 29/07/90