Re: a few q's

[Brian May <bam@snoopy.apana.org.au>]

In article <[🔎] Pine.LNX.3.96.981219093508.27595A-100000@brahe.midco.net> you write:
>Think shared development.  Users foo, bar, and baz are all working on a
>project located in /usr/local/project .  All three users have been added
>to group "project".  /usr/local/project is owned by group project, and
>is drwxrwsr-x.  Each user has a umask of 002.
>
>Therefore, no matter who creates a new file in /usr/local/project, the
>other two users will be able to edit the file.
>
>I've got machines configured both ways - it really depends on the main
>application.

IMHO, it should be possible to specify a global setting that works
with ALL shells. Otherwise, the system administrator has to modify
each shell individually.

eg: umask `cat /etc/umask`

Sure, the Debian standards say that each user should have his/her own
group, but many Unix systems are not configured this way, and would
require considerable time to add this many groups with potentially
no advantage (not to mention NFS systems...).

While I am at it (maybe this has already been implemented), I think
it would be very useful to have a single file for default environment
settings. This, for instance, would allow the system administrator
to setup the users MAIL paths to a non-Debian standard (eg $HOME/Mailbox)
without changing the configuration for every shell or (even worse) every
user. I once heard of a proposal for /etc/environment. I don't know if
this is the same thing or if it got anywhere...

It would be very easy to do both, whats difficult is agreeing on how it
should be done...

Brian May