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SUMMAIN(1) General Commands Manual SUMMAIN(1)

NAME

summain - gather file checksums and metadata

SYNOPSIS

summain [-c=CHECKSUM] [--checksum=CHECKSUM] [--config=FILE] [--dump-config] [--dump-memory-profile=METHOD] [--dump-setting-names] [--exclude=FIELD] [--generate-manpage=TEMPLATE] [-h] [--help] [--help-all] [--list-config-files] [--log=FILE] [--log-keep=N] [--log-level=LEVEL] [--log-max=SIZE] [--log-mode=MODE] [-m] [--mangle-paths] [--memory-dump-interval=SECONDS] [--no-default-configs] [--no-mangle-paths] [--no-relative-paths] [--output=FILE] [-f=OUTPUT-FORMAT] [--output-format=OUTPUT-FORMAT] [-r] [--relative-paths] [--secret=SECRET] [--version] [FILE]...

DESCRIPTION

summain gathers metadata about files, and computes their checksums. It is intended to create a manifest of the files. The manifest can be used to see if something has changed: a new manifest can be created and compared with the old one with diff(1).

The manifest looks like this:

Name: foo/bar/foobar
SHA1: 1234123413241324
Mtime: 2010-01-01 02:08:00.127651 +0000
Mode: 1755

The filename is URL-encoded to ensure it is purely ASCII. Mode is in octal.

Only some inode fields are included. It does not make sense to compare, for example, the access time, so that is not included.

Time stamps are given using microsecond precision, for the benefit of those filesystems that can support precise timestamps. (Should be nanosecond, but Python return timestamps as floating point, and nanosecond precision is too much for the floating point type.)

The inode and device number fields will not be reported accurately. Instead, they are normalized so that manifests are useful after the files have been restored from backups. Accurate numbers would mean everything seems to have changed. Normalized means that there will be no differences. The numbers are reported so that hard links can be checked.

Directories named on the command line will be recursed automatically.

OPTIONS

which checksums to compute: MD5, SHA1, SHA224, SHA256, SHA384, SHA512; use once per checksum type (default is SHA1)
do not output or compute FIELD
SUPPRESSHELP
show this help message and exit
mangle (obfuscate) paths

write output to FILE, instead of standard output
choose output format (rfc822, csv, json)
print paths relative to arguments
use SECRET to make mangled paths unguessable
show program's version number and exit

Configuration files and settings

add FILE to config files
write out the entire current configuration
SUPPRESSHELP
show all options
SUPPRESSHELP
clear list of configuration files to read

Logging

write log entries to FILE (default is to not write log files at all); use "syslog" to log to system log, or "none" to disable logging
--log-keep=N
keep last N logs (10)
--log-level=LEVEL
log at LEVEL, one of debug, info, warning, error, critical, fatal (default: debug)
--log-max=SIZE
rotate logs larger than SIZE, zero for never (default: 0)
--log-mode=MODE
set permissions of new log files to MODE (octal; default 0600)

Peformance

make memory profiling dumps using METHOD, which is one of: none, simple, or meliae (default: simple)
make memory profiling dumps at least SECONDS apart

EXAMPLE

To make a complete manifest of a directory tree so that you can later verify that nothing at all has changed:

summain foo > foo.summain


To verify that nothing has changed:






summain foo > foo.summain-2
diff -u foo.summain foo.summain-2