frak

"Don't be a little paranoid; worry about everything, or let it all go."

James Alan Gardner, Trapped

Description

frak compares two AFS file trees and reports on any differences. Its primary purpose is to determine the changes in a read/write AFS volume relative to its read-only replicas before releasing those changes, but it can also compare any two arbitrary file trees in AFS. It understands AFS-specific features like mount points and directory ACLs and can mount the read/write and read-only volumes in a working area so that the root paths need not be known.

frak can also generate bundle files to revert and re-apply the changes in the read/write volumes, which can be used to revert changes in order to release a volume (to move it to another server, for example) and then reapply them.

The basic idea behind frak and the original implementation are from Neil Crellin, and it's proven incredibly useful for administering our AFS cell over the years. I have since fixed bugs, added some convenience features, and restructured the code. We use this program constantly at Stanford.

The name frak comes from the swear word used in Battlestar Galactica, which should give you some ideas about the origin of this program.

Requirements

frak is written in Perl and requires Perl 5.005 or higher. It also requires the Stat::lsMode module, available from CPAN.

In order to generate diffs of changed files, a diff program that supports diff -u (such as GNU diff) is required. To use the revert and re-apply feature, bundle is required.

License

Copyright 1998, 1999, 2004 Board of Trustees, Leland Stanford Jr. University.

This program is free software; you may redistribute it and/or modify it under the same terms as Perl itself. This means that you may choose between the two licenses that Perl is released under: the GNU GPL and the Artistic License. Please see your Perl distribution for the details and copies of the licenses.

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The program:

Documentation:

• Documentation
• Change log