ING Solaris Cluster Site-Wide Login Files
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This note describes how the Site-Wide login files are executed
and how they can be customised to generate an environment. The
customisation can be
-
by CFG for groups of users
-
by individual users for themselves
This note is composed with the expected audience of someone
familiar with unix.
Also available on-line.
is a simple guide for
users to do a few simple customisations
"Example Startup file modifications for the Solaris
Cluster"
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The shell for all user accounts is tcsh. This is selected for
it's user friendliness. Users can choose to have csh or sh.
The root accounts use sh by default.
At login the shell looks for and executes several files
before giving the user a prompt. The list is described in
the man pages for tcsh and is reproduced here
-
Startup and shutdown
-
A login shell begins by executing commands from the
system files /etc/csh.cshrc and /etc/csh.login. It
then executes commands from files in the user's home
directory: first ~/.tcshrc (+) or, if ~/.tcshrc is
not found, ~/.cshrc, then ~/.history (or the value
of the histfile shell variable), then ~/.login, and
finally ~/.cshdirs (or the value of the dirsfile
shell variable) (+). The shell may read
/etc/csh.login before instead of after
/etc/csh.cshrc, and ~/.login before instead of after
~/.tcshrc or ~/.cshrc and ~/.history, if so
compiled; see the version shell variable. (+)
Non-login shells read only /etc/csh.cshrc and
~/.tcshrc or ~/.cshrc on startup.
For ING Solaris Cluster we do not have /etc/csh.cshrc nor
/etc/csh.login. We want the same files to be used by csh and
tcsh users so we use ~/.cshrc and no ~/tcshrc so for a login
shell the above paragraph evaluates to
Note
As described above some flags can force execution/omission
of these see the man pages on tcsh for information on
-
-f
-
The shell ignores ~/.tcshrc, and thus starts faster.
-
-l
-
The shell is a login shell. Only applicable if -l is
the only flag specified.
-
-m
-
The shell loads ~/.tcshrc even if it does not belong to
the effective user. Newer versions of su(1) can pass -m
to the shell. (+)
For some users the ~/.cshrc file is in fact a link to a
read-only file /opt/INGall/etc/home.cshrc. This is a measure to
avoid accidental omission of a critical source statement (see
below).
The file /opt/INGall/etc/home.cshrc has ownerships
user:root, group:other.
The link ~/.cshrc has ownerships user:root, group:other.
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This appears as the first line in the supplied .cshrc file. It
has two main parts
-
the part executed by all csh or tcsh shells
-
the part executed by all login csh or tcsh shells
Within each part there are two sections
-
statements executed for all users
-
source statements executed for groups of users
The result is a felxible system usable by every account.
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The user can create a .postcshrc file and a .postlogin file.
These are invoked by sitwide.cshrc as the last part of all csh
and tcsh shells and the last part of all login shells. These two
files therefore are all a user should need to alter to define a
unique environment.
A simple guide for users on
how to do a few simple customisations
is also available on-line:
"Example Startup file modifications for the Solaris
Cluster"
return to index