Re: Bug 27092 breaks localisation of potato install (IMPORTANT)

[goswin.brederlow@student.uni-tuebingen.de]

Branden Robinson <branden@debian.org> writes:

> On Sat, Aug 12, 2000 at 07:25:06PM +0200, goswin.brederlow@student.uni-tuebingen.de wrote:
> > Someone on irc complained that xdm doesn't parse /etc/enviroment.
> 
> Getting hysterical about this issue now won't change the fact that potato
> is releasing in a few days WITHOUT a change to this behavior.

Too bad, I hope this behaviour gets mentioned somewhere a newbie finds
it on the cd.

> Just sourcing /etc/environment like a shell script is wrong.  However,
> individual users may customize /etc/X11/Xsession (or /etc/X11/xdm/Xsession)
> to do this.

Just sourcing wouldn't export the variables. And a

eval env "`cat /etc/environment`" /etc/X11/Xsession

in /etc/X11/xdm/Xsession doesn't cope with unquotet strings with
spaces like

BLA=bla blub

I made sure I don't have any of those in my environment, so it works
for me. Is the line above valid for /etc/environment or must a string
with spaces actually be quoted?

> I used to source /etc/environment from Xsession.  Pedants hounded me to
> death until I removed it.  So argue with them, not me.

Send them to PAMify xdm. :)

> The right way to do it is to PAMify xdm to use the pam_env.so module.
> 
> And no one has done that yet, particularly not Red Hat, who claimed to have
> "PAMified" xdm.

Of cause that would be better, but not before woody.

> Do not monkey with the severity of this bug.

To late and it makes the package unsuitable for release (of woody).

May the Source be with you.
                        Goswin