INSTALLWATCH(1)                                                                                                                            INSTALLWATCH(1)

NAME
       installwatch - tracks installation of local software

SYNOPSIS
       installwatch [options] command

DESCRIPTION
       This  manual page documents briefly the installwatch command. This manual page was written for the Debian GNU/Linux distribution because the origi-
       nal program does not have a manual page.

       installwatch is a program that is used in order to track the changes made while installing local software (i.e. "make install").  It  monitors  the
       requested  command,  and  produces  a  log  which indicates all created and modified files. By default it outputs to syslog(3), using a priority of
       ``LOG_USER | LOG_INFO''... this may be overridden by the use of the -o option, however.

       The log format is as follows:

            <return-value> <syscall-name> <argument> #<comment>

       Each field is delimited by a ``^I'' character if logging to syslog(3), or by a TAB when logging to a file.

ENVIRONMENT
       INSTALLWATCH_BACKUP_PATH
              Set this variable to the location that you want installwatch to copy the original version of files which get modified.  The  directory  will
              be created if it does not exist, assuming that the parent is writeable.

OPTIONS
       -o     Directs  that  output from the logged command be written to filename , rather than being output to syslog(3).  If the specified file already
              exists, it will be truncated.

EXAMPLES
       A typical usage would look something like this:

              installwatch -o ~/install/package.log make install

       This of course would execute the command ``make install'', while logging to the file ``~/install/package.log''.

BUGS
       installwatch does not work with programs which are statically linked with libc.

       Due to LD_PRELOAD limitations, it does not work with suid programs (this would probably introduce security problems, anyway).

       mknod(2) is not monitored.

AUTHOR
       This manual page was written by Greg Norris <adric@debian.org>, for the Debian GNU/Linux system (but may be used by others).