-- $Id: README,v 1.1 1996/09/20 17:54:47 joke Rel $ NAME This is a very short description of `patchbase' and it's complementary `unpatchbase' program (both being simple Bourne shell scripts). You will need these programs, when you mirror a site, e.g. the GNU Website, that uses absolute paths in all HTML references, and thus can only be copied to a mirror server's root directory, which is certainly NOT what most mirror admins or other people want. Thus, `patcbase' helps you to install a mirror of such site, in any place you want, by (a) converting all "local" references in the HTML sources to relative ones; and (b) inserting a tag in the of all HTML documents, which makes all of the local references generated from step (a) acessible from their new location on the mirror site. SYNOPSIS patchbase [] unpatchbase [] DESCRIPTION On invocation `patchbase' walks through the directory hierarchy given on it's command line or anything below the current directory, finds files with suffix `.htm' or `.html' and replaces the tag in all of theses files with: where `the-url-given-to-patchbase' is the URL that points to the directory you have installed the files. Moreover, all absolute refs in the HTML code, i.e., `HREF="/.."' and `SRC="/.."' are converted to relative references, simply by deleting the leading `/'. On invocation `unpatchbase' undoes the effects `patchbase' had on the HTML files in the directory hierarchy given on it's command line, or the current directory. EXAMPLE To create a mirror of the GNU Web site http://www.gnu.org/ you'd simply: (1) create a directory anywhere on your site, say `.../public/webland/gnu', where `.../public/webland/gnu' is accessible via URL `http://foobar.com/ webland/gnu/' (2) copy the GNU site to this directory, using url_get(1), webcopy(1), or whatever you like. (3) `cd' to the `.../public/webland/gnu' directory and invoke `patchbase': patchbase http://foobar.com/webland/gnu/ . CAVEAT `unpatchbase' can only restore HTML files modified by `patchbase' to their original state, if and only if they did contain the tag on a single line. Any other (HTML) text after this tag, present in the original source, is lost. AUTHOR Joerg Heitkoetter. This stuff is PD; do whatever you want. Send updates, comments, and all the fish to joke@de.uu.net