RIH: ("Request for Hints on How to Learn Your System")

Daniel, Tony,

  Ok, here's the last one.  Sorry this takes so much information!

  Andy is about to try to bring up your software.  It is often a bit of a
task to walk into someone else's production environment and figure out
what's going on, so we're trying to anticipate the kinds of things that
we'll need to do to get this working.  Here's a draft of what he thinks
he may be doing tomorrow.  If you can suggest better approaches, more
documentation we haven't found, specific suggestions...  PLEASE!  :-)


> Hi Guys.
> 
> In thinking about how we can quickly put up a useful registry, one of the
> obvious options was to simply grab all your software and try to port it
> to a machine here.  We would like to examine this option very closely in
> say, the next 24 hours. :-)  What's involved with setting up a RIPE db
> "system" and where can we find the code/scripts/etc.
> 
> Steps I can imagine....
> 
> (0) ftp to ftp.ripe.net and pull files A, B, C from X, Y, and Z directories
>     Presumably A,B,C constist of things like the email parser, the restricted
>     shell for guardians, scripts that move data between files and into the
>     "master" db file, the RIPE whois server, etc.
> (1) If they do not already exist, set up similar directories on the new 
>     machine. 
> If A,B,C are C programs and not scripts...
> (2) Try to compile (if C, C++) A, B, C in their new directories.
> (3) Sort through compiler errors due to our using a different compiler and
>     go back to (2).
> (4) Find out the directory strucuture into which all registered data goes.
>     For example where is information parsed from email dumped.
> (5) Create said directories and files.
> (6) Find out new unix accounts need to be set up - and how they are to be
>     set up.  (PATH variables, restricted shells, email addresses, etc).
> (7) Create said accounts and set up environments.
> (8) Find out what checker programs are run and if they are done by hand,
>     by the registering party or by cron.
> (9) Learn to run said checker programs.
> (10) Have some lunch.
> (11) After lunch, try to send some test data to the email parser sitting on 
>      the new machine.
> (12) Try to enter some test data as a "guardian".
> (13) Spend time trying to figure out why (11) and (12) are not working.
> (14) Give up on (13) and set up a conference call with you guys in hopes
>      of sorting through things.
> 
> What do you guys think?  What would your list look like?  Rumor has it that
> Andrew Partan has been through this, yes?
> 
> Thanks a lot!
> 
> Andy
> 



-------- Logged at  Wed Feb 16 09:35:33 MET 1994  ---------