mysterious files on a fedora system but not from rpm

[G.Wolfe Woodbury]

On Sun, Nov 18, 2007 at 09:06:22AM +0200, Dave Burns wrote:
> Naturally there are a few that I created myself. But I am surprised by
> the number of files that exist on one of my fedora systems, files that
> did not arrive as part of an rpm.
> 
> #find / -type f -print|grep -v '^/proc/'|while read file; do rpm -qf
> "$file" >/dev/null || echo "$file"; done > notinrpm
> wc -l notinrpm
> 1521 notinrpm
> 
> Let's take an example:
> 
> #rpm  -qf /usr/share/firstboot/modules/language.pyc
> file /usr/share/firstboot/modules/language.pyc is not owned by any package
<snip> 
> Should I be getting paranoid at this point (or rather, allowing my
> pre-existing paranoia free range)?
> 
> Thanks,
> Dave

That particular file is the compiled form of the "language.py" file
that is part of the firstboot source code.  Python is an interpreter
and uses "compiled" (bytecode) to speed up interpretation.

It doesn't exist until something causes firstboot to use the
module, so it doesn't appear in the package manifest.

Practically all .py modules will get turned into .pyc files and
won't match the manifests.

There are also a few dynamicly created configuration and
database files floating around Fedora.

Hope This Helps (HTH)
-- 

Wolfe