Patrick Elliott wrote:
> you should know, from any sort of audit 
> log, which of those files *it* created, so would need to have moved.

Not really. If a program invokes BITS (or wget) to download files it needs, 
it's not going to get audited. If it creates an index file, then later fills 
the index with the names of files you created, that's not going to get 
copied properly. If you use the SQL server engine to create a database for 
your document indexer, is that the SQL server or the document indexer 
creating that file?

> Point is, this monolithic mess pretty much precludes any sort of easy 
> reinstall of *anything*, since any reinstall you make, unless the thing 
> being altered is *purely* data, not configuration, or other things you 
> need to work when moved, you are hosed. 

You're oversimplifying. And it's certainly not easy to come up with a 
standard way of moving such things.

> Got a MySQL thing on here I 
> don't even want to contemplate installing to a new machine. Not because 
> I doubt its hard, just likely to be more complicated than it first 
> seems, precisely *because* its frakking Windows that the thing is 
> installed on, and that just really makes things way more interesting 
> when do this stuff. lol

Except MySql is originally UNIX code. It's just as hard to move the 
installation of something complex in UNIX as is it in Windows. If everyone 
follows the rules about where to put things, it's *easier* to move it under 
Windows than under UNIX, since there's actually specific places reserved for 
various kinds of internal data that come with a program in Windows, while 
there's no good standard on (for example) how to name a dot-file in the home 
directory or a config file in /etc to define what program it's configuring.

Trust me: Moving a MySql installation actually requires you to know where 
all the configuration information for MySql is stored and how on Linux as 
well as Windows. :-)  If a program goes outside of where it's supposed to be 
storing configuration information, it's no easier to find it in Linux than 
in Windows.  (Altho the Singularity OS from Microsoft is actually making 
good strides towards fixing this, since permissions are based not only on 
users but on programs as well.)

-- 
Darren New, San Diego CA, USA (PST)
  "How did he die?"   "He got shot in the hand."
     "That was fatal?"
          "He was holding a live grenade at the time."

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