Re: mystery file spotted in /

[Wayne Topa <brittman@capital.net>]

Dan Jacobson(jidanni@jidanni.org) is reported to have said:
> Say if we spot a file,
> # ls -l /root-n
> -rwxr-xr-x  1 root root 0 2004-03-24 00:31 /root-n
> and we can't tell what package(s) made it,
> # dpkg -S /root-n
> dpkg: /root-n not found.
> nor is it mentioned in debian-policy/fhs,
> how do we know it is safe to remove it,
> or must we just let it sit there for eternity out of fear,
> even though all along it might have just been the product of our
> fumble fingers, or maybe it indeed is the linchpin that holds the
> system together.
> 
> Why is there no Department of Homeland Security, whom we can ask if
> this file really belongs on our system, and not is some wetback,
> enjoying the good times right on "/" itself, immune from meaningful
> stat(1) checks, as "I am a 0 bytes file, access times don't
> necessarily reflect my importance, you still dare to delete me?"
> 
> Anyway, I don't even know if the available security packages will
> investigate randomly named files in this free for all file system of
> ours where any traces of what did what are only in each .deb itself.
> 
> Can I delete /root-n?

When I find something like this I simply do
mv ./file-in-question ./1-file-in-question

I'll find out in show order if it was needed or not.  I do that with
.firefox everytime I update firefox, since the last 2-3 seem to be
buggy and I don't want to lose the _good_ configs.  :-)

Wayne
-- 
Just about every computer on the market today runs Unix, except the Mac
(and nobody cares about it).
                -- Bill Joy 6/21/85
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