Subject: Re: kernel vs boot-program
To: Tobias Weingartner <weingart@austin.BrandonU.CA>
From: None <rhealey@aggregate.com>
List: tech-kern
Date: 03/15/1994 10:59:47
> Any way to make this a *little* more extensible.  As a systems administrator,
> I am sure I could find a use for other '@' tokens.  As an aside, how about
> system wide evironment variables.  They could start with '@' instead of '$'.
> Then for each process, the environment space would be initialized from the
> '@' space first, then merged with the parents, and what was passed to it.
> 
> This could be something like the VMS (did I say VMS?) logicals.
> 
> This would make certain things a little easier.  For example, the name of
> a machine would just become @hostname.  The name expansion could then be
> performed on only '@' tokens, which only root can define, hopefully "solving"
> the security problem.
> 
> The most likely candidates for '@'ing would be things like:
> FULLNAME
> HOME
> LOGNAME
> SHELL
> TERM
> TERMCAP
> USER
> HOST
> ARCH
> HOSTTYPE
> HOSTNAME
> 
> I'm not quite awake here yet, just sort of thinking out loud.  Let me know
> what you think...
> 
	I think you've forgotten what /etc/profile and /etc/.login are
	used for...

	We don't have to braindamage the kernel to get functionality we
	already have through normal UNIX model means...

		-Rob

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