john@design.axis.fr (John H) (05/23/90)
Here is a wierdy I came across a while ago. I have my "TZ" environment variable set to: TZ="HFH-1HFE-2;84/2:00,273/2:00" So I get DST at the right time here in France. It works very well. But! Whenever I do a "su -l" (or any of the sysadm scripts that do a "su -l" internaly) I get the error: 00: Invalid identifier just after I've entered the password. Does anyone know what might be going wrong here? I see the same effect in 386/ix 2.0.2 and Esix System 5.3.2 Rev. C. John Hughes.
gemini@geminix.mbx.sub.org (Uwe Doering) (05/28/90)
john@design.axis.fr (John H) writes: >Here is a wierdy I came across a while ago. I have my "TZ" environment >variable set to: >TZ="HFH-1HFE-2;84/2:00,273/2:00" >So I get DST at the right time here in France. It works very well. >But! Whenever I do a "su -l" (or any of the sysadm scripts that do >a "su -l" internaly) I get the error: > 00: Invalid identifier >just after I've entered the password. Does anyone know what might >be going wrong here? >I see the same effect in 386/ix 2.0.2 and Esix System 5.3.2 Rev. C. I've experienced the same problem here in Germany. There seems to be a bug in `su' that prevents it from working with the long form of the time zone string. Eventually I gave up and returned to the short form. It's easier to change this string twice a year than to change it whenever you want to use `su'. Hope this is fixed in Interactives 2.2 release. Uwe -- Uwe Doering | Domain : gemini@geminix.mbx.sub.org Berlin |--------------------------------------------------------------- West Germany | Bangpath : ...!uunet!pyramid!tub!tmpmbx!geminix!gemini
tneff@bfmny0.BFM.COM (Tom Neff) (05/29/90)
My guess is that the environment setup 'su' does for the child process includes something of the form TZ=$yourtz without quotes around the variable! All I can suggest is that you create some cute front end shell script like TZ='"'$TZ'"' exec /bin/su $* and use that instead of 'su'. It should fool the child's shell.
martin@mwtech.UUCP (Martin Weitzel) (06/02/90)
In article <GU3FQ8L@geminix.mbx.sub.org> gemini@geminix.mbx.sub.org (Uwe Doering) writes: >john@design.axis.fr (John H) writes: > [about problems with certain characters in the "TZ" environment variable] > >I've experienced the same problem here in Germany. There seems to be a >bug in `su' that prevents it from working with the long form of the >time zone string. Eventually I gave up and returned to the short form. Me too. >It's easier to change this string twice a year than to change it whenever >you want to use `su'. Hope this is fixed in Interactives 2.2 release. Yes, the price of having a system that doesn't boot - which can also occur in this situation - is too high. My "philosphy" in this respect tends to become: - let the system run with UTC (also the hardware clock runs with this setting) - let every user who wants it set TZ in the ".profile" or ".login" Eventually I will supply two files with apropriate TZ settings, and link these files alternately to one standard name when DST switches. Everyone who likes may then include this standard file in the login configuration. Well, not only with respect to the purged DES algorithms, also concerning timezones we europeans sometimes feel a little like "second class citizens" if we use "ami-ware" (= american hard- and software) ... 1/2:-). -- Martin Weitzel, email: martin@mwtech.UUCP, voice: 49-(0)6151-6 56 83