Looking any reference to everything in /scripts

[Kent Brockman]

Hi, some patches and new utilities are often stored in /scripts folder. I usually know what are some of them for because I have been advised to use it in order to correct some error states. But there is still much of those scripts I don't know what are there for, and even if some of them may help me to do any task more easily.
So I ask if there is any reference page or README file that explains what are all they for.

[nyjimbo]

Most are undocumented, what I do is come here and do a search on the exact script name and look for the results and then note them in a text file on my work machine. I have figured out almost all of them doing it that way.

If you have any coding background you can also just pico/vi look into them and get an idea.

[Kent Brockman]

Yep, that's the hard way, but after doing one more search I found these interesting resources. This is a small portion of what I talk about.

http://www.cpanel.net/docs/whm/Scripts.htm

http://forums.cpanel.net/showthread.php?t=49719

[cpanelkenneth]

Some (I don't know the percentage) are older and haven't been maintained in a while. Before running a script, check the first few lines for the copyright date. If the script doesn't have a copyright date, chances are it may not work properly on a cPanel 11 install. If possible, run the script on a test machine, or one with very good backups you made recently. That way if some goes amiss, the problems can be mitigated rapidly (usually).

If you are familiar with Perl, reading the script itself can often give you an idea what it is supposed to do.

[cpanelkenneth]

Recent scripts generally provide a message via --help.

[Kent Brockman]

Yep, I see. By now, the only way I have to distinguish between code being maintained/updated/added is to see if the lastmodified date has changed since last cPanel upgrade. I already know that those scripts are a mixed repository of current internal processes, test utilities, and very outdated scripts. The problem is that not every cPanel admin may know that, and they should be able to know what are these scripts for, without the need to inspect every code to discover what is it for or even if its outdated or not (which may not always be easily infered by reading the code). By simply leaving at the beginning of those scripts an internal comment with the release date and purpose of that release, would simplify investigation thru countless discussions at the forums, providing users with an implicit knowledge base, decentralized, although unquestionable and always present. I think that would be a good practice to start implementing for future scripts. I love cPanel and just want to make it easier for the daily user; everybody may benefit from this.