Re: PW#5-10: System-wide environment variables used for program configuration

[Brian White <bcwhite@verisim.com>]

> >      If a program should depend on environment variables for its
> > configuration, the program has to be changed to fall back to a
> > reasonable default configuration if these environment variables are
> > not present.
> 
> My counter example here would be Oracle.  That relies on environment
> variables even to operate at all (ORACLE_SID, ORACLE_HOME etc).  I
> suppose what we'd have to do for misbehaving software like this is
> have a wrapper program around the oracle executables?

If it was run by a user, then the user should set those variables.  If
it's run as a daemon, then they should be set in (the conffile) init.d/*.

Are then any other places they would be needed?


> FYI, and I don't think this changes anything, just FYI, the place to
> put system wide environment variables on debian should be
> /etc/environment, which is sourced by /etc/profile (or whatever is
> appropriate for a given shell).  It is not owned by any packages, and
> should be considered to be owned by the sysadmin.  Nor should any
> package touch this one.

Actually, I suppose it should go under /etc/env.d <grin>.  This might
not be a bad thing to consider.

                                          Brian
                                 ( bcwhite@verisim.com )

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