SUMMARY: Setting up Login, .Xsession and so on, in a nice way

From: Morten K. Barfoed (morten@sas3.dsri.dk)
Date: Tue Oct 29 1996 - 04:33:30 CST


Well, this is long overdue - sorry to the two who responded, and sorry
to anyone who needed the information in the mean time.

My original question:

----- Begin Included Message -----
 
Dear sun-managers,

I'm fiddling with setting up my .login, .cshrc and so on files in
a really sound manner, and I'm not finding it trivial !

Therefore, do some of you have the good recipy of how to do it ?

We're running a mixture of Solaris 2.5 and SunOS 4.1.3, using
OpenWindows. Users log on from both Console's, Xterminals and
PC's (with telnet or with some Xterminal emulator).

Most users us the tcsh.

So, there are a lot of setup-scripts that need be set up. Sometimes
.login is called somtimes not. Sometimes .cshrc is called, sometimes
not. Xterminal users don't use .login but can either use .xsession
or .xinitrc.

.xinitrc is also used by people starting on the console. What else ?

How do we utilize these facilities in the best way ? Summary
will be posted.
 

----- End Included Message -----

Thanks to Kevin P. Inscoe and Ron Loftin.

Kevin sent me his own .cshrc file and his own .login-file, and to
summ up the contents:

1: The .cshrc acts according to platform and machine (using uname -m
   and uname -n to get the information).

   Initially in the script, it sets up the part of the PATH-variable
   that depends on the platform - later merging this with the part
   of PATH that is global.

   This is the main-function of the script - it does some other stuff
   but not that much.

2: The .login sets up variables for the OPENWIN-environment, and per-
   forms an array of commands, such as displaying login-information,
   and eventually starts up the openwin-programs themselves.

This about does it. Kevin writes, that he would put more stuff into the
.login and less in the .cshrc if he could (without doing a bunch of work,
I guess, for the files he sent me are quite elaborate).

Ron Suggests me to do more or less what Kevin has done - dividing the
scripts into sections according to machine type and then individual
machine.

He further suggest to have just one .cshrc file, and let users call -
'dot' - the global .cshrc in their own .cshrc's - thus making it possible
for each and everyone to do personal setup.

Ron also comments on the .xinitrc / .xsession problem - he suggest
to make them equal.

- so for me - I haven't implemented any of the solutions yet - I've
been busy ! I have done one thing though - isolated the setting of the
PATH-variable to one script - it is called from both .cshrc and .login -
and will set up an environment-variable that says 'path has been set
up'. (Path being one of our problems earlier).

We have two platforms (SunOS 4.1.3 and Solaris 2.5) and use two sets
of .cshrc and .login files. That in itself is a bit stupid, and they
do look alike, so I believe that the next step will be to merge these
and do what has been suggested.

Furthermore I need to analyze exactly which of the scripts are called
when, and in what sequence. This should probably have been the first
step.

_ regards to you all:

Morten Krabbe Barfoed

Danish Space Research Institute phone: +45 35 32 58 30 (switch-board)
Juliane Maries Vej 30 phone: +45 35 32 57 20 (me directly)
DK 2100 Copenhagen East FAX: +45 35 36 24 75
Denmark e-mail: morten@dsri.dk



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