Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site mit-eddie.UUCP Path: utzoo!linus!decvax!genrad!mit-eddie!smh From: smh@mit-eddie.UUCP (Steven M. Haflich) Newsgroups: net.unix-wizards Subject: Re: recovering clobbered aliases file Message-ID: <496@mit-eddie.UUCP> Date: Mon, 25-Jul-83 08:12:37 EDT Article-I.D.: mit-eddie.496 Posted: Mon Jul 25 08:12:37 1983 Date-Received: Mon, 25-Jul-83 17:07:49 EDT References: <3287@sri-arpa.UUCP> Organization: MIT, Cambridge, MA Lines: 16 Perhaps a more useful way for protecting files which are edited by a large population is to make safety copies every day, week, and month, with the obvious crontab entries: 0 1 * * * cd /usr/lib; cp aliases aliases.daily; chmod 444 aliases.daily 0 2 * * 1 cd /usr/lib; cp aliases aliases.weekly; chmod 444 aliases.weekly 0 3 1 * * cd /usr/lib; cp aliases aliases.monthly; chmod 444 aliases.monthly To avoid clutter in crontab, such daily, weekly, and monthly commands can be collected into single shell scripts executed by cron. This is useful for /etc/passwd, /usr/lib/aliases, and perhaps /etc/motd. It uses little disk space, and provides a useful checkpointing facility in conjunction with diff when strange changes are not recognized immediately. Steve Haflich