Re: /etc/environment

[Gilbert Laycock <gtl1@mcs.le.ac.uk>]

>>>>> Frank Barknecht writes:

 > I would like to add that ssh also reads /etc/environment and expects
 > name=value pairs there only. So if you have lines like:

 > PAGER=less
 > export PAGER

 > in /etc/environment, ssh complains about a bad syntax with this:

 > Bad line in /etc/environment:  export PAGER

 > So even though I only use bash on my system, I can't easiliy keep
 > environment-vars in  /etc/environment without getting ugly warnings by ssh.

However, it appears that lines like:

export PAGER=less

will at least be accepted without error messages by ssh; you just end
up with "export PAGER=less" in your environment, which seems to be
harmless. After a very superficial test, it appears that you can have
an /etc/environment that contains BOTH forms, and get the best of both
worlds with only minor side effects: 

export PAGER=less
PAGER=less


This is as close as I have come to getting /etc/environment to work as 
advertised as a single location for global environment settings.

-- 

  Gilbert Laycock                 email:          gtl1@mcs.le.ac.uk
  Maths and Computer Science,     http://www.mcs.le.ac.uk/~glaycock
  Leicester University            phone:         (+44) 116 252 3902