guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) (11/04/90)
(This is *NOT* a "wizards" or "internals" question, so followups are being redirected to "comp.unix.shell". There is, as far as I know, no mailing list gatewayed there; mail followups should probably be sent to "info-unix", which I think still goes to "comp.unix.questions".) >(What's "sylogin.com" and why is it better than ".login" ?!) Well, one might be able to infer what it is from the subject line. When a login C shell starts up, it sources ".cshrc" from the user's home directory, and then ".login" from the user's home directory. Some versions of the C shell *also* will source a file from some system directory, e.g. "/etc/csh.login" or whatever. This is similar to what more recent versions of the Bourne and Korn shell do; they source the ".profile" file from the user's home directory, but also source "/etc/profile" as well. The problem with >How about -- 'ln -s .login some_other_file' ? >Or, simply have .login do nothing else but exec your preferred file? is that the "other file" would be global, so nobody would be able to do any customization of their environment. The answer to the original question >>In other words, is there a Unix file equivalent to sylogin.com in the VMS >>world? is "no", for a couple of reasons: 1) not everybody in UNIX uses the same shell; some use Bourne-compatible shells (Bourne shell, "ksh", "bash", etc.), while others use the C shell. As such, there couldn't be *one* file equivalent to "sylogin.com" on a UNIX system that has the C shell. 2) not all UNIX shells directly support the notion of a global file of that sort. Older versions of the Bourne shell don't, and most versions of the C shell don't (some do, such as the S5R4 C shell and, I think, the HP-UX C shell, and probably some others). If not all shells support that notion, one thing you can do is have everybody's ".login" or ".profile" file source the global file, although those users may be allowed to edit or replace their ".login" or ".profile" file and have it not do so, so you may not be able to guarantee that the global file will be executed.
prc@erbe.se (Robert Claeson) (11/05/90)
In a recent article guy@auspex.auspex.com (Guy Harris) writes: >If not all shells support that notion, one thing you can do is have >everybody's ".login" or ".profile" file source the global file, although >those users may be allowed to edit or replace their ".login" or >".profile" file and have it not do so, so you may not be able to >guarantee that the global file will be executed. Some sites force all their users to have a shell (commonly sh or ksh) that reads a system global login file, and if they want csh or something else, exec it from their .profile's. -- Robert Claeson |Reasonable mailers: rclaeson@erbe.se ERBE DATA AB | Dumb mailers: rclaeson%erbe.se@sunet.se | Perverse mailers: rclaeson%erbe.se@encore.com These opinions reflect my personal views and not those of my employer.