Marking Your Cyber Territory?
NoOnesMessiah asks: "I recently finished a relatively major webmail install for a large company and it all went very, very well. I left a '/.cornerstone' file for posterity (with names, dates the disks started spinning, 'asbuilt' notes for apache, php, etc) so that future generations would know who to blame (or call) in 3 to 5 years. I have also done this in various and sundry places within my network infrastructure while I wore the mantel of Senior Systems Engineer and even in bits of a major mp3 player's website while it was growing up on our network. Hell, even the concept of the 'asbuilt' is more than 14 years old to me. How was PHP built? Look at the "asbuilt" file for configure or compile-time options... This got me to wondering; How do Slashdot readers mark their territory so future generations know they were there? Certainly I'm not the only one who does this. I would think that most people do, even in some small way. Do you mark your own personal mailer, web server or desktops in the same fashion as you might for your employers or clients?"
On any machine that I work on, I create a directory similar to '/-Build/' or 'C:\-Build\'. In this folder I keep subdirectories w/ drivers, software, updates, configs, etc. One other thing I include is a file called build.txt. In this file I put some nice information to have:
---
foo.bar.com
Built on 6/20/2003
Built by
Installation notes:
Updates:
6/26/2003 -
---
I am a big fan of making sure everybody knows "who-dun-it" and how to do it again.
The HTML I type for websites sometimes has a <!-- --> comment, but usually something funny rather than my own name or address. I never leave ad advertising mark unlike many admins with my name websites and other information. Usually the webmaster or postmaster@whatever.tld points to my common but spam-filled free email (yahoo/hotmail) and people can still contact me with a quick reply latency.
Oh yeah, C++ source code is a different game...
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
except for documentation I've written; and places where I've built/repackaged installers that I *had* to put my name on; I've left as little behind as possible. Two good reasons: the environments I worked in left little room for originality and often wanted to make sure that you could not be directly linked to the project(s) or would be relied upon in the future for it; and I also wanted to leave as little behind that might incriminate me in some shape or form in the future. Better to be forgotten than to have someone go; "that... whatisname... oh yeah, Kevin... what a jerk..." etc.
I think with the interesting people, their lives can't possibly be wrapped up into a nice little package.