Explain return code in man page

[didier13150]

Hi there,
I need some information about return code. I try to look into code, but it's very difficult to have a complete list. It will be very nice to add this in man page.
Thank in advance,
Didier.

[brc0x1]

Hi Didier, I was surprised to realize the man pages don't document return codes. They absolutely should do this, and I'll fix this in the next release. Until then, here's a quick summary of how things are intended to work:

• The twadmin, twprint, and siggen commands return 0 on success, and 1 on any error.

• In tripwire integrity check mode, the return code is a set of bits OR'd together to indicate the check result:
  1: At least one file or directory was added.
  2: At least one file or directory was removed.
  4: At least one file or directory was modified.
  8: At least one error occurred during the check.
  So if an integrity check returns 0, it means the check ran successfully and no changes were observed.

• Other tripwire modes return 0 on success, and 8 on error, for consistency with IC mode.

Right now there might be an exception or two to these rules; I see one spot in core/msystem.cpp that would exit with -1, but it's right below a comment saying "should never happen ...", and I doubt anyone will bump into it in practice. I think I'll change this and any other exceptions I run across at the same time I update the man pages.

[didier13150]

thank you brian. Have you a date for the next release ?

[brc0x1]

I don't have an exact date, but it will probably be sometime in December or January.

[brc0x1]

I've added Exit Code sections to the man pages on this branch: https://github.com/Tripwire/tripwire-open-source/tree/dev/q1-2018 . I have some other documentation stuff to do there before it becomes a 2.4.3.7 release, but I hope to have that wrapped up in the near future.

[brc0x1]

Resolved in 2.4.3.7

[brc0x1]

Closing as resolved.