Don Cragun wrote:
>
> >Date: Wed, 18 Oct 2006 11:12:45 -0400 (EDT)
> >From: Glenn Fowler <gsf at research.att.com>
> ... ... ...
> >
> >for newbie guidance why not provide a time honored, commented default
> >.profile
> >"# this sets the default edit mode to emacs ..."
> >"ENV=$HOME/feel-like-bash-and-linux.sh # ..."
> >
>
> Hi Glenn,
>
> One reason for not changing .profile in this case is that doing so
> could change the behavior of /usr/bin/ksh and /usr/xpg4/bin/sh as well
> as providing a default editing mode for /usr/bin/ksh93.
Minor nit: Updating /etc/profile would not be enougth. /etc/profile is
for login shells and only affects interactive non-login shells via
passing it's environment to the child processes.
/etc/ksh.kshrc and ~/.kshrc are slightly different - they affect all
interactive shell sessions, regardless whether they are login shells or
not. For example if a user has /usr/bin/bash as login shell he/she may
get bash-specific defaults which may not be usefull for an interactive
ksh session.
> Setting a
> default (when an editing mode has not otherwise been established) in
> /etc/ksh.kshrc only affects /usr/bin/ksh93 users.
Another problem is that updating files in user's homedirs is tricky -
for example I would have to change a few 10000 user accounts and AFAIK
other sites have far more users. This is why like the introduction of
/etc/ksh.kshrc - it provides a system-wide way to provide (usefull)
defaults without having to setup a matching config file for each single
user (and then later deal with the nightmares of keeping them in sync
and uptodate - which may be tricky when the site uses things like
SecureNFS (e.g. NFS with SecureRPC or Kerberos5 auth.) or has the policy
that admins are not allowed to change any content under
/home/${LOGNAME}/ without explicit and written permission by it's
users).
----
Bye,
Roland
--
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