[3492] in SIPB bug reports
TeX file cleanup in the sipb locker
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Jonathan I. Kamens)
Tue Feb 9 22:40:59 1993
Date: Tue, 9 Feb 93 22:41:18 -0500
From: "Jonathan I. Kamens" <jik@Aktis.COM>
To: bug-sipb@Athena.MIT.EDU
Once again, we ran out of space in the sipb locker.
I freed up some space by doing two things:
1) I replaced all files in subdirectories of /mit/sipb/lib/tex which
have duplicate files with the same names in /usr/athena/lib/tex with
symbolic links to the files in /usr/athena/lib/tex.
The script I used to do this is in
/mit/jik/tmp/link-duplicate-files.pl. The output of the script is in
/mit/jik/tmp/link-output.
2) I deleted a few unnecessary files in /mit/sipb/lib/tex/macros and
/mit/sipb/lib/tex/ps.
I managed to free up over 8 meg by doing this.
Ideally, all of the tex programs in the sipb locker should have both
/mit/sipb/lib/tex/* and /usr/athena/lib/tex/* (in that order) in their
various paths. Furthermore, people who set the paths with environment
variables to use /mit/sipb/lib tex should be including both it and
/usr/athena/lib/tex. Therefore, we *should* be able to just delete
all these duplicate files outright, instead of installing symbolic
links, and that would save even more space.
However, I didn't do this, for two reasons:
1) I don't know if the tex programs in the sipb locker have correct
paths, and I don't have the know-how to check all of them quickly, or
time to check all of them slowly.
2) Even though people *should* be including both /mit/sipb/lib/tex and
/usr/athena/lib/tex in their paths, some of them probably aren't.
Therefore, deleting the files would be a user-visible interface
change, which needs to be discussed before we go ahead and do it.
I haven't modified anything in sipbsrc to reflect the changes I've
made, because:
1) The tex stuff in sipbsrc is a mess that doesn't install
consistently and isn't understood by anybody (except perhaps
amgreene).
2) Much of the tex stuff currently installed in the sipb locker
shouldn't be there at all, as discussed above, so the correct thing to
do is to remove the stuff from sipbsrc, not to modify its installation
rules. But, as discussed above, that has to be considered more
seriously before doing it.
I have saved an image of what /mit/sipb/lib/tex looked like before I
started doing this, in /usr/tmp/sipb-tex.tar.F on my workstation.
It's NFS-mountable ("attach -n -e pit:/usr/tmp"), so if this needs to
be backed out for some reason and I'm not around, someone else can do
it.
jik
