[SOLVED] Checking changes made before/after installing application?

littlebigman · 08-05-2010, 08:59 AM

Hello,

I need to know which files were added/modified/moved/deleted after compiling and installing an application from source code, ie. the command-line, Linux equivalent to the venerale InCtrl5.

Is there a utility that does this, or a set of commands that I could run and would show me the changes?

The following is sort of OK, although it includes the lines where changes occured (eg. "@@ -2,6 +2,7 @@"), and "." and ".." that I don't need:

Code:

# ls -aR /tmp > b4.txt
# touch /tmp/test.txt
# ls -aR /tmp > after.txt
# diff -u b4.txt after.txt

Thank you.

bigrigdriver · 08-05-2010, 09:33 AM

In the final step of installation (make install), you see the output scrolling down the terminal window. You can capture that output to a file using the tee utility.

Example: make install | tee install.txt

Afterward, you can inspect the file to see what happened to files during installation.

littlebigman · 08-06-2010, 07:07 AM

Thanks for the idea. I was looking for a universal solution to see what changes were made to the filesystem, whether it was when running "make install", using apt-get/yum, or just running an application, so as to be able to understand how an application works.