Inquiry/sugestion about coreutils

R00KIE · 2009-03-12 13:44:09

This doesn't seem the best place to post this but the other places didn't seem to fit too so here goes.
I have been trying to run some tools which are made to be compatible with RHEL and I have been finding a few catches. One of this catches was that "tr" from coreutils on arch is places under /bin and the programs (well the scripts that run the programs and make things work) were expecting tr to be in /usr/bin. For now I have solved this by symlinking it but I know its not the best solution.
What I am wondering is if there is any special reason why tr is where it is on arch and if its place could be changed in the package (I guess this could possibly break more things than it would fix).

tomk · 2009-03-12 16:39:16

AFAIR the reason the coreutils executables are in /bin is to accommodate users who have /usr on a separate partition, but I'm open to correction in that one.

The best solution would be to edit the scripts as required - ideally, they should use your $PATH variable instead of hardcoding anything.

R00KIE · 2009-03-12 17:46:46

Well yes correcting the scripts would be the best approach but there is a huge number of scripts and these programs I'm talking about give enough problems already without changing anything
About the hardcoding, for example ksh (which I have suggested the change already) goes into /usr/bin but the scripts start with #!/bin/ksh as is usual.
Also some coreutils files are on /bin and others on /usr/bin thats why I asked before asking "officially" for any change.
Anyway, now I know the reason why things are the way they are and probably there are more reasons and any change could break things that work perfectly now). The programs weren't even supposed to work on Arch (or most of the best known distros) so I think I'll just use the dirty hacks and make it work .... thinking of it, would it improve anything, read would it be less dirty and bad if I did a package just with the symlinks I need instead of creating them by hand?

Daenyth · 2009-03-12 18:35:57

I'd file a bug report to put ksh under /bin instead of /usr/bin; shells should really all be in /bin

As for the scripts, you can do for example "sed -i 's|/usr/bin/tr|tr|g' scriptname", and add PATH=/bin:/usr/bin so that it's always the right one...

R00KIE · 2009-03-12 22:20:34

Ok, thx for the suggestions.
I'll file the bug report about pdksh which I'm using now and resides in /usr/bin.

Allan · 2009-03-13 00:19:10

I can not find any need of "tr" in our initscripts and associated packages so perhaps it could move to /usr/bin.

R00KIE · 2009-03-13 15:03:01

As long as any change doesn't break anything then I guess this would help make scripts intended for other distros work better in Arch, if any change can break stuff then just let it be.
As for making some magic happen with sed (thanks for the tip Daenyth) I will let the scripts alone, I am in charge of taking care of the software maintenance at school now (just in our room, nothing big) and in the "production server" we have decided to use centos as it should be RHEL compatible. This because if anything really goes wrong and I (and other people) can't figure it out then it makes sense that we can't ask support when using the tools in unsupported systems. So my arch will be the test subject where I try to solve any minor issues that come up and test the software, then I can replicate the solution on the "production server". The solutions to problems can range from changing scripts slightly to make links point somewhere else so I will fix the problem on my notebook, create a tar (if there are many fixes) and dump it on the server therefore changing the scripts might not be the best choice

About the bug report ... someone bet me to it ... by months

Arch Linux

#1 2009-03-12 13:44:09

Inquiry/sugestion about coreutils

#2 2009-03-12 16:39:16

Re: Inquiry/sugestion about coreutils

#3 2009-03-12 17:46:46

Re: Inquiry/sugestion about coreutils

#4 2009-03-12 18:35:57

Re: Inquiry/sugestion about coreutils

#5 2009-03-12 22:20:34

Re: Inquiry/sugestion about coreutils

#6 2009-03-13 00:19:10

Re: Inquiry/sugestion about coreutils

#7 2009-03-13 15:03:01

Re: Inquiry/sugestion about coreutils

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