Re: Broken system web pages - ideas?

[Dr. David Kirkby]

"L. D. Marks" wrote:
> 
> While testing a package on a number of systems, it
> has become clear to me that they are often "broken"
> in non-obvious ways. As just two examples that I
> have come across:
>         1) Users not having permissions to shared libraries
>         2) Duplicate, and inconsistent gcc/g++/g77 compilers
> 
> Has anyone ever collected a list of these, and suggestions
> of what to do on a web page? (I would be glad to collate
> these if you want to send them to me off-line.)

When one runs 'make install' the permissions are usually only accessible
to root (due to root umask), which is fine if root wants to test it
first, but not if root wants to install a package such as gcc for all to
use. 

In contrast, on my Sun, if I install a package with pkgadd it should
have permissions set so that anyone can use the package. So if I
download a copy of the freeware gcc compiler from www.sunfreeware.com,
or install one of Sun's commercial compiler, they will both be
accessible to all. 

One option might be to add a target to Makefiles called 'installw' or
something similarl. So when executes 'make installw', the permissions
are suitable for world access. All directories would be set to 755,
executables to 755 and non-executables to 644. 


-- 
"The day Microsoft makes something that doesn't suck is probably 
the day they start making vacuum cleaners." -Ernst Jan Plugge.

Dr. David Kirkby,
Senior Research Fellow,
Department of Medical Physics,
University College London,
11-20 Capper St, London, WC1E 6JA.
Website: http://www.medphys.ucl.ac.uk/~davek
Author of 'atlc' http://atlc.sourceforge.net/