stamp is a simple software system that allows you to take an md5-based snapshot of what a system looks like at a given point (not quite an instant) in time.
You can also compare two such snapshots, to see what's changed.
I've used stamp for years for primarily two purposes:
- I set up our autoinstall procedure to automatically stamp all systems installed, shortly after installation. This makes it pretty easy to see what files have changed on a system since it was first installed - which is especially useful, say, just prior to an upgrade.
- I've also used it successfully, when installing misbehaved applications that like to scribble all over the system
disk rather than going into a single directory hierarchy, to get a list of files that the installation process
changes. Specifically, one would:
- generate a stamp
- install your software
- generate another stamp
- (automatically) compare the two stamps to see what's different
The relevant files are:
- The stamp program itself
- The check-stamp program, which either compares two precomputed stamps, or compares a single preexisting stamp against one that check-stamp computes itself
- The S99 stamp script, which is used to generate a stamp at boot time once, and then not again. S99stamp wants my "daemon" program, which I haven't put up a web page about yet. If you're not on Tru64 Unix, you can probably just eliminate it from S99stamp without any problems.
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