admin script help

mhearse has asked for the wisdom of the Perl Monks concerning the following question:

I'm working with a machine that has a problem with the ownership of symlinks. I need to search the entire directory tree for symlinks. Then, if they are owned by a specific user, change the user and group. Then I want to echo the full path to the symlink changed. This machine is using Perl 4, so I don't think modules are an option. I'd appreciate any help/suggestions.

chomp (@files = `ls -R /`);    #Is there a better way to
                               #find all symlinks on system?
foreach $x (@files) {
   if (-l $x && -o $x) {       #How do I test for ownership 
      chown (1234, 35, $x);    #of a specific user?
      print "Changed $x\n";    #How do I print the full path?
   }
}
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Re: admin script help by ehdonhon (Curate) on Sep 30, 2003 at 06:17 UTC
File::Find has a neat utility called 'find2perl'. Take a few minutes to learn that, and it will write 90% of your script for you. update I missed the part about using Perl 4 when I read your post the first time. If the File::Find module is out, then how about just opening a pipe from the "find" command?	[reply]
Re: admin script help by Abigail-II (Bishop) on Sep 30, 2003 at 07:34 UTC
If all you have is perl4, you might as well use a shell one-liner. Something like the following ought to do: `find / -type l -user "olduser" -exec chown "newuser:newgroup" {} \ +;` [download] Abigail	[reply] [d/l]
Re: admin script help by Juerd (Abbot) on Sep 30, 2003 at 07:00 UTC
This machine is using Perl 4 Wow, ten year old software still in use. May I ask why? Juerd # { site => 'juerd.nl', plp_site => 'plp.juerd.nl', do_not_use => 'spamtrap' }	[reply]
Re: admin script help by aquarium (Curate) on Sep 30, 2003 at 12:54 UTC
you should check if each file/symlink you find to see if it's a symlink or file, if you want to change the ownership of the symlink itself, as this is done with "chown -s symlink_name" ..otherwise a usual chown only changes the ownership of the file pointed to by the symlink.	[reply]