Kenneth Stephen wrote:
<stuff snipped>
> First of all, before I get off on this rant, I'd like to mention
> that I dont have a clue as to what this '/rotot/profile' file is.
> Secondly, I think (and I may be wrong here), the EDITOR environment
> variable is a RedHat specific solution. For instance, on Debian, I cant
I've seen mention in the docs that came with Debian 2.1 of this EDITOR
environment variable - IIRC gets used for any call for an editor that
doesn't specify which editor, kinda like what crontab does. (well,
actually what happens is the program looks at the editor environment to
see which editor to use)
> find any reference to this in the cron / crontab man pages, and I do know
> that the /etc/alternatives/vi symlink is what determines the actual editor
> program that is used when 'vi' is invoked.
I've seen similar symlinks in Slack '96, Slack 3.4, Slack 4.0, and
Debian 2.1, though on Slack I believe they were more along the lines of
/bin/vi -> /bin/vim
> Which brings me to my rant :
>
> I have noticed a disturbing trend recently. Distributions are
> patching some basic Unix commands to have different options. As a result,
> the advice you give a newbie may not be valid if he / she is running a
> distribution that is different from yours.
This gets addressed below.
> An example would be the 'tar' command, about which we saw a query
> recently. There exists a distribution (I forget which) which supplies a
> tar with a '-y' option. This is the equivalent of the "standard" '-z'
> flag. with the difference that the bzip2 compress program is invoked
> instead of gzip. No such flag in Debian (though both Debian and RedHat
> have the generic --use-compress-program flag).
This is a function of which version of tar is included, not the distro.
I'm not exactly sure which version of tar it was that started coming
with the y option already included, but it was recently. And as always
happens, some distros picked up on that newer version before others
did. It's *not* the ditros that are patching these commands (at least
not in this case) but the maintainers of the commands changing the
commands and the distros then not picking up the new version at the same
time as all the other distros.
> The 'userid' and 'group id' assignments are different on
> different distributions. I think, though, that the LSB is supposed to
> solve this one.
Are you referring to the numeric IDs? Those are different not just
between distros but different between installations of the same distro.
I looked through the LSB site but couldn't find any reference to IDs.
> The init scripts come in two different styles. The inittab numbers
> mean different things in different distributions.
There's the BSD init and the SYSV init. And yes, the scripts are *very*
different. For inittab the only difference I'm aware of is which number
dumps you into the GUI at boot.
> I guess these differences are to be expected, as different
> distributions target different segments of the Linux community. However,
> it doesnt make our task easier. And to make it worse, some of the people
> contributing to this list, lack the experience to know that the advice
> they give is distribution specific. They are to be commended for helping,
> but sometimes they end up misleading. I dont see a way to solve this. Do
> you?
Sure, just do what most everyone else on this list does. When a
question is posted look and see which distro the asker is using. Then
answer in light of that distro. If the asker doesn't say which they are
using, ask them.
--
Mike Werner KA8YSD | "Where do you want to go today?"
ICQ# 12934898 | "As far from Redmond as possible!"
'91 GS500E |
Morgantown WV | Only dead fish go with the flow.
