If you are going to the trouble of an automated install, couldn't you just
include the necessary s/\/star/wherever/ lines when installing shell
scripts? A quick find looking for text files followed by sed on each one
would  fix many of the problems and only leave you with the problems where
binaries have /star built in (even that is not a problem if it was done
right - ActiveState have been distributing rpms of perl for years that
fixup the install directory after installation). The RPM approach Al and I
used for the starlink RPMs was simply to build with a known very long path
as $INSTALL, and then use sed for post install fix up (since that works
for binaries as well so long as the new path does not exceed the length of
the build path and you pad the string.

Tim

On Fri, 1 Aug 2003, Rankin, SE (Stephen) wrote:

> Yes it prints a polite message and then bombs out.
>
> Steve.
>
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Mark Taylor [mailto:[log in to unmask]]
> Sent: 01 August 2003 09:57
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: SUN212 and Windows STARJAVA
>
> On Fri, 1 Aug 2003, Rankin, SE (Stephen) wrote:
>
> > David,
> >
> > I have updated the quick_install script to create /star.
>
> If it can't do this (because it's not running as root) does it
> bomb out or print a polite message to the effect that it can't
> create that link?  I'd favour the latter; partly because sysadmins
> may be happier to know exactly what privileged actions are being
> taken than run a big fat script with root access.
>
> --
> Mark Taylor    Starlink Programmer    Physics,  Bristol University, UK
> [log in to unmask]  0117 928 8776  http://www.star.bris.ac.uk/~mbt/
>

--
Tim Jenness
JAC software
http://www.jach.hawaii.edu/~timj