Re: default environment for scripts?

[Tomas Pospisek <tpo2@spin.ch>]

On Mon, 22 Oct 2001, Norbert Veber wrote:

> On Sat, Oct 20, 2001 at 04:28:59PM +0200, Santiago Vila wrote:
> > On Thu, 18 Oct 2001, Tomas Pospisek wrote:
> >
> > > * Is there a standard way to define a default environment for /etc/init.d
> > >   scripts? Is there any reason not to have a possibility to set such a
> > >   default environment? If there isn't wouldn't it be a good idea to be
> > >   able to define such an default environment in a standarized way?
> >
> > Maybe not. Policy says: "No program may depend on environment
> > variables to get reasonable defaults". I think this policy is good
> > even if there was a "standard way" to define environment variables.
> > (I remember the ms-dog days, when autoexec.bat became full of environment
> > variables of all kinds...)

Um yes I agree to some extent. But what do you say to the problem I
mentioned. I.e. how do you get to a *completely* (!) localised system
(*everything* in german) or where everything needs to access a let's say
NFSROOTed disk that has a different codepage or ...
?

> > I assume you can define whatever environment variables you really need
> > inside the init.d scripts that really need them, since they are
> > usually conffiles.

Yes, I can do that but:

1) it will be gone the next time I upgrade
2) the resulting error's are sometimes (as in cpio's case) quite subtle,
   which makes them a pain to track them down
3) I'll have to do the same thing for every single programm that is called
   *somewhere* from an non-interactive shell (daemons, children of
   daemons, shellcalls from daemons, cron, etc.)

So the "this is your global environment act followingly" approach is IMO
cleaner.

> The initial environment comes from /etc/init.d/rcS, and is inherited by
> every init script, and used (unless the init script overwrites some/all
> variables).

Unfortunately that's not the case. I can set a variable in
/etc/init.d/rcS, export it there but I don't see it in a usershell.
Neither do I see it in a cronjob. (!)

*t

----------------------------------------------------------------------------
             Tomas Pospisek
	     SourcePole   -  Linux & Open Source Solutions
	     http://sourcepole.ch
	     Elestastrasse 18, 7310 Bad Ragaz, Switzerland
	     Tel: +41 (81) 330 77 11
----------------------------------------------------------------------------