[smokeping-users] Question about upgrading from 2.2.7 to 2.4.2

[G.W. Haywood]

Hi Eric,

On Thu, 11 Jun 2009, Eric Chatham wrote:

> > mail4:/home/ged/src/net/smokeping/bin# >>> diff smokeping smokeping.dist
> > ...
>
> I'm not sure what this is.

The 'diff' utility show you the differences between files.  So you can
save a copy of the original file, make a mess of it, and see what the
changes are later on without difficulty.  It's used for much more than
that but you don't care about that at the moment.

The line you see above is a command prompt on a machine called 'mail4',
which is the hostname, a colon, the working directory, a hash sign (to
signify it's a root shell) and my favourite tripled-greater-than-sign
so I can see where I'm going to be typing the next command. The tripled
greater-than sign is in red, for a root prompt, but I didn't attempt to
do the colour in an email.  It double reminds me that it's a root shell.
You can customise your shell's command prompt in all kinds of ways.  In
fact the shell is rather a powerful programming tool in its own right.
This book is on my desk as we correspond:

http://oreilly.com/catalog/9780596009656/

As soon as the next edition comes out, I'll buy a copy.  But I digress.

Following the prompt is the command

diff smokeping smokeping.dist

which just tells me what the differences are between the safe original
copy of the smokeping script (smokeping.dist) and my modified copy.
It's worth getting to know these tools.  Get yourself a Linux system
administrator's guide or something, and spend some quality time with it.
It will repay the investment many times over.

> The symlinks worked.  I'm seeing the data on the master URL ...
> I'm still learning a lot.

Great ... so are we all. :)

--

73,
Ged.