also sprach Brenda J. Butler <bjb@achilles.net> [2002.01.11.0106 +0100]:
> > good point. after all: [1]
> >
> > 1. http://www.unet.univie.ac.at/aix/files/aixfiles/environment.htm
>
> Right! I always look to IBM AIX documentation to find out about my
> unix system ;-)
you too? cool. maybe we should meet.
nah, /etc/environment supposedly works the same on linux. at least it
fixed my perl locale issues. so it's either perl or system wide.
> Seriously, though, I'd never heard of the /etc/environment file
> so I looked it up with
>
> find /etc -type f -exec grep "/etc/environment" {} \; -print
>
> and the only file returned was /etc/pam.d/login
>
> So /etc/environment would appear to be a pam artifact.
i really doubt that actually.
> I wonder what that means.... Specifically, I wonder if pam
> stuff is run when you su from one account to another?
of course. how else would you authenticate? do a `su` with a wrong
password and check /var/log/auth.log.
> Also, the shells in my xterms do not even have the env variable that
> previously existed in the /etc/environment file (LANG=C), although
> in the shell that came up with the above experiment the LANG variable
> was there.
mine do. seriously. and no, there are *no* LANG= etc. lines in my user
profile scripts (.zsh*), and the only place that lists LANG= in /etc
(aside from vim, gtk, apache, lynx, and latex2html, which simply use it
in a script), only /etc/environment lists it.
> Weird...
i concur.
> Does this all mean that I have to log out all my windows, get back to
> the xdm prompt in order to log back in and get the effect of the
> /etc/environment file?
it shouldn't. it's supposedly setting the environment for each and every
process exec()'d.
> I'll never understand this plethora of startup files... Even
> as I start to understand some of the maze, more parts are
> being hatched for the next version (or the next "layer":
> pam, X windows, etc, etc, etc).
it's actually not too bad. you should start by reading the "from boot to
bash prompt" howto, then go from there...
--
martin; (greetings from the heart of the sun.)
\____ echo mailto: !#^."<*>"|tr "<*> mailto:"; net@madduck
"if beethoven's seventh symphony
is not by some means abridged,
it will soon fall into disuse."
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