PACKAGEADMIN(8)

NAME
packageadmin - install or remove software packages

SYNOPSIS
/usr/sbin/packageadmin

DESCRIPTION
Packageadmin carries out the installation and removal of software packages. A package is a collection of related programs and data files (for example the X Window system, its tools and associated libraries).

A package is saved as a tar(1) archive, held on floppy discs in dsplit(1) format - but packageadmin takes care of all the details of installation/removal.

Packageadmin is a menu driven program. The operations available are:

    -   List packages installed.

    -   Install a package.

    -   Remove a package (optionally saving it to floppy disc).

Prompts generated by packageadmin look like this:
    informative string (a/b/c) [c]>>
This means that you can select one of three options (a, b or c); if you type <return> c will be used as the default.

Most keyboard input is acted upon immediatly, but prompts with the options (Y/N) (generated by dsplit(1)) require the user to press <return> after responding.

IMPLEMENTATION DETAILS
Programs and data used by packageadmin are held in the directory /packages.

Information about installed packages is held in the directory /packages/contents. Each subdirectory of contents describes one package, whose name is the same as the name of the directory.
The contents of this directory (with optional components in brackets) are:

files.Z
    the files making up the package (ascii text, white space separated; compressed using compress(1))

version
    a file containing information about the package, conventionally:

    package_name Version version_string

    Displayed to the the user to give more information about the package contents.

[sizes]
    a file describing the disc space occupancy of the package
    In the present implementation this contains two lines:

    USRNEEDED=<size in kbytes needed in usr partition>
    ROOTNEEDED=<size in kbytes needed in root partition>

    If not present, no size checks will be performed (package will appear to have zero size).

[install]
    a shell script for carring out additional installation operations. Executed after the package files have been placed on the disc.

[remove]
    a shell script for carring out additional remove operations. Executed after package files have been removed from the disc.

Archived packages are kept as dsplit(1) tar(1) archives, the contents are:
    /packages/contents/package_name/*
    {all the files from /packages/contents/package_name/files}
The title of the dsplit(1) disc sequence is constructed from the name and the disc space requirements of the package. It will look like:
    Package: yp ROOTNEEDED=74 USRNEEDED=649

There is a program /packages/packagesize which will add up the needs (in terms of kbytes) for the root and usr areas, for a set of files.
    packagesize <file list>
    packagesize -f <file containing file list>
    packagesize -f - {read the filelist from stdin}
Output, on stdout, is suitable contents for the "sizes" file. Any file whose pathname begins in /usr or usr is included in the usr size. All others are contained in the root size.

SEE ALSO
dsplit(1), tar(1)