[C.A.T.S. CEO]

Link

Not exactly what you describe, but you can use it to check before the installation.

edit: can somebody fix the database, Please?!

[mduell]

In the terminal, before you install:

ls -R / > before.txt

In the terminal, after you install:

ls -R / > after.txt
diff before.txt after.txt > diff.txt

And then open diff.txt in your text editor of choice.

[gberz3]

Hi all,

I'm interested in watching a few different PKG files as they're installed. I've done a "man installer" from the command line but I can't seem to find anything useful. Basically I need a bit of "tripwire" functionality to see *EXACTLY* what is being done, even the pre and post script features that won't necessarily be in a ".plist" file.

Any ideas?

Thanks in advance. . .

[gberz3]

Originally Posted by mduell 

In the terminal, before you install:

ls -R / > before.txt

In the terminal, after you install:

ls -R / > after.txt
diff before.txt after.txt > diff.txt

And then open diff.txt in your text editor of choice.

Thanks, mduell, but that's a bit overly simplistic. I need to know *everything* that occurs during install. Not just the "obvious" files that are places. Plus "ls" assumes that I know which directories to check. I basically need a "supervisor" process that checks everything an installer does.

. . .thanks for the suggestion though.

[Brass]

Originally Posted by gberz3 

Thanks, mduell, but that's a bit overly simplistic. I need to know *everything* that occurs during install. Not just the "obvious" files that are places. Plus "ls" assumes that I know which directories to check. I basically need a "supervisor" process that checks everything an installer does.

. . .thanks for the suggestion though.

ls -R /
will check ALL directories, so there is no assumption about knowing which directories to check.

("ls -aR /" would also check for hidden files)

[gberz3]

Originally Posted by mduell 

ls -R / lists all directories, so you don't need to pick any. Add the flag for timestamps and you'd see files that changed in addition to files that were added deleted.

If the installer does something that doesn't add, change, or delete a file, does it really matter? It will be gone on the next reboot.

Fair enough. Still I'd rather have a solution in realtime; not take a snapshot, do some stuff, take another snapshot and diff. This can get rather tedious when doing software installation test, etc.

. . .either way, thank you for clarification of your suggestion.

Regards

[mduell]

Originally Posted by gberz3 

Thanks, mduell, but that's a bit overly simplistic. I need to know *everything* that occurs during install. Not just the "obvious" files that are places. Plus "ls" assumes that I know which directories to check. I basically need a "supervisor" process that checks everything an installer does.

. . .thanks for the suggestion though.

ls -R / lists all directories, so you don't need to pick any. Add the flag for timestamps and you'd see files that changed in addition to files that were added deleted.

If the installer does something that doesn't add, change, or delete a file, does it really matter? It will be gone on the next reboot.

[Brass]

Originally Posted by gberz3 

Fair enough. Still I'd rather have a solution in realtime; not take a snapshot, do some stuff, take another snapshot and diff. This can get rather tedious when doing software installation test, etc.

. . .either way, thank you for clarification of your suggestion.

Regards

Wasn't my suggestion (just my clarification), but you're welcome, in any case.

For packages, there are tools to look into the content of the package to see exactly what will be installed, and where, but I'm can't think of anything that will actually tell you what files are being written in real time (filesystem-wide). Such a thing should certainly be possible since 10.4, when Apple enabled file system notifications in an application-accessible manner (ie, the mechanism by which Finder windows are now updated automatically as file system content changes).

edit: found the doco for this at: File-System Performance Guidelines: Tracking File-System Changes
Seems that these notifications do not provide enough information to do what your after (they merely notify that a change has occurred, and it's up to the receiver to resync their view of the file system).

[Simon]

I often use a snapshot approach like

code:

sudo ls -alR / > fsdump.tmp
...
sudo ls -alR / > fsdump2.tmp
diff fsdump.tmp fsdump2.tmp

But if you are more interested in seeing "real time" changes to files fseventer will help.

Of course if you're using the normal OS X package installer, just before you hit install chose File > Show Files to list what's going to be installed.