-- What is it? --
fcatalog is a program for identifying the origins of files. Though its operation is similar to the operation of file-checksum-checking security utilities (like tripwire), its purpose and methodology is different.
Using fcatalog you can build up a database of file checksums, with tags indicating which files have which origin. Then, when a file (or files) of unknown origin is (are) presented, fcatalog can identify which of many sources originated the file.
For example, the author has a database of most Solaris releases and numerous Solaris patches, as well as numerous releases of the packages he maintains. From this he can use fcatalog to quickly identify any file he finds in the field, even if an individual binary has been copied away from the package it lived in, or the binaries from multiple revisions of the OS are for some reason present on a system.
fcatalog understands most file archives (zip, tar.gz, etc) and will recurse down through these archives, both when importing file checksums, and when doing file lookups later.
-- Home Location and Latest Version --
The current status of fcatalog and the current version will always be available at http://fcatalog.lupine.org/
-- Requirements and Installation --
fcatalog currently uses SQLite as its back-end database, and thus needs to have the perl SQLite module installed to function. It also needs the perl MD5 digest module to be available as well. All modules are available from CPAN (http://www.cpan.org/ ... or just use perl's CPAN module). Specifically, the modules needed:
DBI
DBD::SQLite
Digest::MD5
Term::ProgressBar (optional)
Once the required modules are installed, fcatalog can be installed in a fairly typical perlesque manner:
perl Makefile.PL (or perhaps: perl Makefile.PL PREFIX=/usr/local)
make
make install
Further documentation will be available via 'man fcatalog' or 'perldoc fcatalog'
-- Example Usage --
A simple test and example of using fcatalog is using fcatalog to import checksums for its own distribution, and then looking them up again. For example, once it has been installed, you can do this from the fcatalog source directory:
fcatalog --tag FCATALOG_X.Y --import `pwd`
then fcatalog --colorize `pwd`
or fcatalog --listtags
-- Licensing --
fcatalog is licensed under the GNU GPL, please see the included LICENSE file for full details.
$HeadURL: http://svn.lupine.org/repositories/fcatalog/tags/BETA_0.3/trunk/README $