Trying Stow

Today transzorp in the #snort-gui channel convinced me to try Stow (sysutils/stow), described as "a program for managing the installation of software packages, keeping them separate (/usr/local/stow/emacs vs. /usr/local/stow/perl, for example) while making them appear to be installed in the same place (/usr/local)."

First I installed the Stow package and made a directory.

# setenv PACKAGESITE ftp://ftp2.freebsd.org/pub/FreeBSD/ports/i386/packages-5-stable/Latest/
orr:/root# pkg_add -vr stow
# mkdir /usr/local/stow

Here is running Stow with no switches.

$ stow
stow: No packages named
stow (GNU Stow) version 1.3.3

Usage: stow [OPTION ...] PACKAGE ...
  -n, --no              Do not actually make changes
  -c, --conflicts       Scan for conflicts, implies -n
  -d DIR, --dir=DIR     Set stow dir to DIR (default is current dir)
  -t DIR, --target=DIR  Set target to DIR (default is parent of stow dir)
  -v, --verbose[=N]     Increase verboseness (levels are 0,1,2,3;
                          -v or --verbose adds 1; --verbose=N sets level)
  -D, --delete          Unstow instead of stow
  -R, --restow          Restow (like stow -D followed by stow)
  -V, --version         Show Stow version number
  -h, --help            Show this help

Next I tested Stow while installing Tcpxtract (which was recently added to the FreeBSD ports tree, but I'll just install the source code here).

$ tar -xzf tcpxtract-1.0.1.tar.gz
$ cd tcpxtract-1.0.1
$ ./configure --prefix=/usr/local/stow/tcpxtract-1.0.1
$ make
$ sudo make install
test -z "/usr/local/stow/tcpxtract-1.0.1/bin" || /home/richard/tcpxtract-1.0.1/install-sh -d 
 "/usr/local/stow/tcpxtract-1.0.1/bin"
  /usr/bin/install -c 'tcpxtract' '/usr/local/stow/tcpxtract-1.0.1/bin/tcpxtract'
test -z "/usr/local/stow/tcpxtract-1.0.1/etc" || /home/richard/tcpxtract-1.0.1/install-sh -d 
 "/usr/local/stow/tcpxtract-1.0.1/etc"
 /usr/bin/install -c -m 644 'tcpxtract.conf' '/usr/local/stow/tcpxtract-1.0.1/etc/tcpxtract.conf'
test -z "/usr/local/stow/tcpxtract-1.0.1/man/man1" || /home/richard/tcpxtract-1.0.1/install-sh -d
 "/usr/local/stow/tcpxtract-1.0.1/man/man1"
 /usr/bin/install -c -m 644 './tcpxtract.1' '/usr/local/stow/tcpxtract-1.0.1/man/man1/tcpxtract.1'
$ cd /usr/local/stow
$ sudo stow tcpxtract-1.0.1
stow: CONFLICT: /usr/local/stow/tcpxtract-1.0.1/bin/tcpxtract vs. /usr/local/bin/tcpxtract

What's that? Oh, I forgot I already installed Tcpxtract on this box, in /usr/local/src/, so I have to remove that for Stow to work.

$ cd /usr/local/src/tcpxtract-1.0.1
$ sudo make uninstall
 rm -f '/usr/local/bin/tcpxtract'
 rm -f '/usr/local/man/man1/tcpxtract.1'
 rm -f '/usr/local/etc/tcpxtract.conf'

Now I can Stow Tcpxtract.

$ cd /usr/local/stow
$ sudo stow tcpxtract-1.0.1
$ cd tcpxtract-1.0.1/
$ ls -alR
total 10
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel  512 Jan  9 16:58 .
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel  512 Jan  9 16:58 ..
drwxr-xr-x  2 root  wheel  512 Jan  9 16:58 bin
drwxr-xr-x  2 root  wheel  512 Jan  9 16:58 etc
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel  512 Jan  9 16:58 man

./bin:
total 58
drwxr-xr-x  2 root  wheel    512 Jan  9 16:58 .
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel    512 Jan  9 16:58 ..
-rwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  54923 Jan  9 16:58 tcpxtract

./etc:
total 8
drwxr-xr-x  2 root  wheel   512 Jan  9 16:58 .
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel   512 Jan  9 16:58 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  2764 Jan  9 16:58 tcpxtract.conf

./man:
total 6
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel  512 Jan  9 16:58 .
drwxr-xr-x  5 root  wheel  512 Jan  9 16:58 ..
drwxr-xr-x  2 root  wheel  512 Jan  9 16:58 man1

./man/man1:
total 6
drwxr-xr-x  2 root  wheel   512 Jan  9 16:58 .
drwxr-xr-x  3 root  wheel   512 Jan  9 16:58 ..
-rw-r--r--  1 root  wheel  1036 Jan  9 16:58 tcpxtract.1

Tcpxtract is now installed.

$ which tcpxtract
/usr/local/bin/tcpxtract
$ ls -al /usr/local/bin/tcpxtract
lrwxr-xr-x  1 root  wheel  37 Jan  9 17:04 /usr/local/bin/tcpxtract -> 
 ../stow/tcpxtract-1.0.1/bin/tcpxtract

To remove Tcpxtract, I do this in the /usr/local/stow directory:

$ sudo stow -D tcpxtract-1.0.1/
$ which tcpxtract

To reinstall, it's easy:

$ stow -R tcpxtract-1.0.1
$ which tcpxtract
/usr/local/bin/tcpxtract

transzorp says "I use Stow to upgrade sensors... I just build the latest software into new dirs under /usr/local/stow and then do a stow -D followed by a stow package-new.version."

I plan to see how best I can use this software when handling source code.

Comments

Anonymous said…
Stow is also a really good package management system for unprivileged user accounts. It allows you to keep track of package versions without ever leaving $HOME or using the root account.
2:00 PM
Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Zeek in Action Videos

Image
This is a quick note to point blog readers to my Zeek in Action YouTube video series for the Zeek network security monitoring project .  Each video addresses a topic that I think might be of interest to people trying to understand their network using Zeek and adjacent tools and approaches, like Suricata, Wireshark, and so on.  I am especially pleased with Video 6 on monitoring wireless networks . It took me several weeks to research material for this video. I had to buy new hardware and experiment with a Linux distro that I had not used before -- Parrot .  Please like and subscribe, and let me know if there is a topic you think might make a good video.
Read more

MITRE ATT&CK Tactics Are Not Tactics

Image
Just what are "tactics"? Introduction MITRE ATT&CK  is a great resource, but something about it has bothered me since I first heard about it several years ago. It's a minor point, but I wanted to document it in case it confuses anyone else. The MITRE ATT&CK Design and Philosophy document from March 2020 says the following: At a high-level, ATT&CK is a behavioral model that consists of the following core components: • Tactics, denoting short-term, tactical adversary goals during an attack; • Techniques, describing the means by which adversaries achieve tactical goals; • Sub-techniques, describing more specific means by which adversaries achieve tactical goals at a lower level than techniques; and • Documented adversary usage of techniques, their procedures, and other metadata. My concern is with MITRE's definition of "tactics" as "short-term, tactical adversary goals during an attack," which is oddly recursive. The key word in the tacti...
Read more

New Book! The Best of TaoSecurity Blog, Volume 4

Image
  I've completed the TaoSecurity Blog book series . The new book is  The Best of TaoSecurity Blog, Volume 4: Beyond the Blog with Articles, Testimony, and Scholarship .  It's available now for Kindle , and I'm working on the print edition.  I'm running a 50% off promo on Volumes 1-3 on Kindle through midnight 20 April. Take advantage before the prices go back up. I described the new title thus: Go beyond TaoSecurity Blog with this new volume from author Richard Bejtlich. In the first three volumes of the series, Mr. Bejtlich selected and republished the very best entries from 18 years of writing and over 18 million blog views, along with commentaries and additional material.  In this title, Mr. Bejtlich collects material that has not been published elsewhere, including articles that are no longer available or are stored in assorted digital or physical archives. Volume 4 offers early white papers that Mr. Bejtlich wrote as a network defender, either for technica...
Read more