Or, we could do it the easy way

[syberghost.livejournal.com]

One of my more troublesome users today informed me that his application (which he supports, and escalates directly to the vendor, we are not in that loop) was dumping core on his level 3 test server but nowhere else, and he wanted to verify "what had changed" recently. We'd done OS patching on the box among other things, so thousands of files in over a hundred patchsets (it's a Solaris box) had changed, and I gave him the list.

He then asked me if the same patch set had been applied to his Level 1 and Level 2 boxes, and I verified this.

Then he sprung the doozy. "Can I send you guys an RT to compare all the OS packages between these three boxes and let me know of any differences"?

Fortunately I convinced him that he could shave a few weeks off getting a response from us by instead telling the vendor to list any patches they required to be above or below certain levels.

If he decides he still needs that info, I'm gonna send him the output of "ls -lR /" on all three boxes.

Edit: yes, it was half an hour before we were to leave for the weekend.