mtree(8)

NAME

mtree - map a directory hierarchy

SYNOPSIS

mtree [-LPUcdeinqruxw] [-f spec] [-f spec] [-K keywords] [-k
keywords]
      [-p path] [-s seed] [-X exclude-list]

DESCRIPTION

The mtree utility compares the file hierarchy rooted in the

current
directory against a specification read from the standard in

put. Messages
are written to the standard output for any files whose char

acteristics do
not match the specifications, or which are missing from ei

ther the file
hierarchy or the specification.

The options are as follows:

-L Follow all symbolic links in the file hierarchy.

-P Do not follow symbolic links in the file hierarchy,

instead con

sider the symbolic link itself in any comparisons.

This is the
default.

-U Modify the owner, group, permissions, and modification

time of

existing files to match the specification and create

any missing
directories or symbolic links. User, group and per

missions must
all be specified for missing directories to be creat

ed. Corrected
mismatches are not considered errors.

-c Print a specification for the file hierarchy to the

standard out

put.

-d Ignore everything except directory type files.

-e Do not complain about files that are in the file hier

archy, but not

in the specification.

-i Indent the output 4 spaces each time a directory level

is descended

when create a specification with the -c option. This

does not
affect either the /set statements or the comment be

fore each directory. It does however affect the comment before the

close of each
directory.

-n Do not emit pathname comments when creating a specifi

cation. Nor

mally a comment is emitted before each directory and

before the
close of that directory when using the -c option.

-q Quiet mode. Do not complain when a ``missing'' direc

tory cannot be

created because it already exists. This occurs when

the directory
is a symbolic link.

-r Remove any files in the file hierarchy that are not

described in

the specification.

-u Same as -U except a status of 2 is returned if the

file hierarchy

did not match the specification.

-w Make some errorconditions non-fatal warnings.

-x Do not descend below mount points in the file hierar

chy.

-f file

Read the specification from file, instead of from the

standard
input.

If this option is specified twice, the two specifica

tions are compared to each other rather than to the file hierarchy.

The specifications be sorted like output generated using -c.

The output
format in this case is somewhat remniscent of comm(1),

having "in
first spec only", "in second spec only", and "differ

ent" columns,
prefixed by zero, one and two TAB characters respec

tively. Each
entry in the "different" column occupies two lines,

one from each
specification.

-K keywords

Add the specified (whitespace or comma separated)

keywords to the
current set of keywords.

-k keywords

Use the ``type'' keyword plus the specified (whites

pace or comma
separated) keywords instead of the current set of key

words.

-p path

Use the file hierarchy rooted in path, instead of the

current
directory.

-s seed

Display a single checksum to the standard error output

that represents all of the files for which the keyword cksum was

specified.
The checksum is seeded with the specified value.

-X exclude-list

The specified file contains fnmatch(3) patterns match

ing files to
be excluded from the specification, one to a line. If

the pattern
contains a `/' character, it will be matched against

entire pathnames (relative to the starting directory); otherwise,

it will be
matched against basenames only. No comments are al

lowed in the
exclude-list file.

Specifications are mostly composed of ``keywords'', i.e.,

strings that
specify values relating to files. No keywords have default

values, and
if a keyword has no value set, no checks based on it are

performed.

Currently supported keywords are as follows:

cksum The checksum of the file using the default algo

rithm speci

fied by the cksum(1) utility.

flags The file flags as a symbolic name. See

chflags(1) for infor

mation on these names. If no flags are to be

set the string
``none'' may be used to override the current de

fault.

ignore Ignore any file hierarchy below this file.

gid The file group as a numeric value.

gname The file group as a symbolic name.

md5digest The MD5 message digest of the file.

sha1digest The FIPS 160-1 (``SHA-1'') message digest of the

file.

sha256digest

The FIPS 180-2 (``SHA-256'') message digest of

the file.

ripemd160digest

The RIPEMD160 message digest of the file.

mode The current file's permissions as a numeric (oc

tal) or sym

bolic value.

nlink The number of hard links the file is expected to

have.

nochange Make sure this file or directory exists but oth

erwise ignore

all attributes.

uid The file owner as a numeric value.

uname The file owner as a symbolic name.

size The size, in bytes, of the file.

link The file the symbolic link is expected to refer

ence.

time The last modification time of the file.

type The type of the file; may be set to any one of

the following:

block block special device
char character special device
dir directory
fifo fifo
file regular file
link symbolic link
socket socket

The default set of keywords are flags, gid, mode, nlink,

size, link,
time, and uid.

There are four types of lines in a specification.

The first type of line sets a global value for a keyword,

and consists of
the string ``/set'' followed by whitespace, followed by sets

of keyword/value pairs, separated by whitespace. Keyword/value

pairs consist
of a keyword, followed by an equals sign (``=''), followed

by a value,
without whitespace characters. Once a keyword has been set,

its value
remains unchanged until either reset or unset.

The second type of line unsets keywords and consists of the

string
``/unset'', followed by whitespace, followed by one or more

keywords,
separated by whitespace.

The third type of line is a file specification and consists

of a file
name, followed by whitespace, followed by zero or more

whitespace separated keyword/value pairs. The file name may be preceded by

whitespace
characters. The file name may contain any of the standard

file name
matching characters (``['', ``]'', ``?'' or ``*''), in which

case files
in the hierarchy will be associated with the first pattern

that they
match.

Each of the keyword/value pairs consist of a keyword, fol

lowed by an
equals sign (``=''), followed by the keyword's value, with

out whitespace
characters. These values override, without changing, the

global value of
the corresponding keyword.

All paths are relative. Specifying a directory will cause

subsequent
files to be searched for in that directory hierarchy. Which

brings us to
the last type of line in a specification: a line containing

only the
string ``..'' causes the current directory path to ascend

one level.

Empty lines and lines whose first non-whitespace character

is a hash mark
(``#'') are ignored.

The mtree utility exits with a status of 0 on success, 1 if

any error
occurred, and 2 if the file hierarchy did not match the

specification. A
status of 2 is converted to a status of 0 if the -U option

is used.

FILES

/etc/mtree system specification directory

EXIT STATUS EXAMPLES

To detect system binaries that have been ``trojan horsed'',

it is recommended that mtree -K sha256digest be run on the file sys

tems, and a copy
of the results stored on a different machine, or, at least,

in encrypted
form. The output file itself should be digested using the

sha256(1)
utility. Then, periodically, mtree and sha256(1) should be

run against
the on-line specifications. While it is possible for the

bad guys to
change the on-line specifications to conform to their modi

fied binaries,
it is believed to be impractical for them to create a modi

fied specification which has the same SHA-256 digest as the original.

The -d and -u options can be used in combination to create

directory
hierarchies for distributions and other such things; the

files in
/etc/mtree were used to create almost all directories in

this FreeBSD
distribution.

SEE ALSO

chflags(1), chgrp(1), chmod(1), cksum(1), md5(1), stat(2),

fts(3),
md5(3), chown(8)

HISTORY

The mtree utility appeared in 4.3BSD-Reno. The MD5 digest

capability was
added in FreeBSD 2.1, in response to the widespread use of

programs which
can spoof cksum(1). The SHA-1 and RIPEMD160 digests were

added in
FreeBSD 4.0, as new attacks have demonstrated weaknesses in

MD5. The
SHA-256 digest was added in FreeBSD 6.0. Support for file

flags was
added in FreeBSD 4.0, and mostly comes from NetBSD.

BSD March 29, 2005

BSD