Polarwave's OpenBSD
Tips and Tricks for Newbies

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Checking for Updated Packages

I used to think the packages for a six month release never changed, but that's not true.
I was reading a while back on the list where packages aren't currently being updated,
but I think it's due to mostly a lack of resources, not anyone just deciding they weren't
going to do it any longer. I do know in OpenBSD 4.1 I updated some packages about two
months ago. So, in the future, when there are again some package updates for whatever
particular version of OpenBSD you're running, you can try this script I kludged together
the other night. Like everything else I put up here, it's been tested. That's not to say
you might not run into problems. I didn't once I ironed out a few mistakes I'd made in it.
I got the idea originally from my favorite BSD guru, Dru Lavigne. The article is at:

Hack #51. Get the Most Out of FTP

Here's my version of ~/.netrc with the email changed to protect the guilty. :-)

machine rt.fm
login anonymous
password your@email
macdef obsd
bin
bell
prompt
cd pub/OpenBSD/4.1/packages/i386/
ls -l pkgdirlistnew.txt
bye

#!/bin/sh
#
echo $ obsd | ftp rt.fm
infile1=pkgdirlistnew.txt
infile2=pkgdirlist.txt
if [ ! -f $infile ]; then
     echo "Input file [$infile] not found"
     exit
fi
#
diff pkgdirlistnew.txt pkgdirlist.txt > /dev/null 2>&1
if [ $? -eq 0 ]; then
     echo "No Changes Today!"
     exit
fi
     echo "There are changes in directory listing!" && \
diff pkgdirlistnew.txt pkgdirlist.txt > `date +"%Y%m%d"`newchgs.txt
mail -s "`/bin/hostname` Package Changes" username < `date +"%Y%m%d"`newchgs.txt
     echo "Recent package changes in `date +"%Y%m%d"`newchgs.txt"
mv pkgdirlistnew.txt pkgdirlist.txt

• You set 2 variables, pkgdirlistnew.txt and pkgdirlist.txt to test against
• You get logged in automatically anonymously to the server
• You change directory to the directory where the packages are
• You get a directory listing which is written to pkgdirlistnew.txt
• You exit the ftp server with bye
  
• If for some reason you failed to get the the directory listing pkgdirlistnew.txt
  the script exits
• Otherwise, diff is run against the previously saved packages listing pkgdirlist.txt
  and, if they match, it means there are no changes from last check and the script exits.
  
• If there are changes, they are written to newchgs.txt with the date prepended to the
  file name and the diff information is emailed to the username entered in the script
  
• The scrpt uses mv to overwrite the previous pkgdirlist.txt to be referred to during
  the next check
• The script exits

59      7     *     *      5     $HOME/bin/ftpmac.sh > /dev/null 2>&1

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