makewhatis wierdness in 4.9-stable

[Dmitry Morozovsky]

On Fri, 27 Feb 2004, Kenneth W Cochran wrote:

[snip]
KWC> >So just delete these stale links (actually, I just check my man page hierarchy
KWC> >and clean up several stale links ;-)
KWC>
KWC> Ok, done; guess we'll see what happens with the next periodic-weekly
KWC> run...

You may just run sh /etc/periodic/weekly/320.makewhatis as root to check.

KWC> On a related note, I have some *very* old files in system
KWC> directores (/bin, /usr/bin, /sbin, /usr/sbin, /usr/lib,
KWC> /usr/libexec ...) dating back as far as year 2000,
KWC> apparently from the original install of 4.0-release and
KWC> never updated from {build,install}world.  Is there any
KWC> (safe) way to get rid of that cruft?

In general no. However, no utility in the base system should break if you
delete old files; the only victims would be ports or your own scripts/program.

In your state I would:

0. backup (always wise! ;-)
1. mkdir /var/chroot && cd /usr/src && make installworld DESTDIR=/var/chroot,
   then compare root hierarchy and /var/chroot
2. use sysutils/portugrade to upgrade your ports (use with caution, especially
   when upgrading large sets of ports)
3. use sysutils/libchk to locate unused shared libraries (which would be the
   trickest part)

Or, if you have spare hardware and/or time, just install new system from
scratch and transit local settings to the new system, then shift new system in
(I use this technique for major hardware upgrades for our servers cluster)

Good luck!

Sincerely,
D.Marck                                     [DM5020, MCK-RIPE, DM3-RIPN]
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*** Dmitry Morozovsky --- D.Marck --- Wild Woozle --- marck at rinet.ru ***
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