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Date:      Sun, 21 Jan 2001 16:45:50 +0100
From:      Roelof Osinga <roelof@nisser.com>
To:        Bjoern Fischer <bfischer@Techfak.Uni-Bielefeld.DE>
Cc:        freebsd-stable@FreeBSD.ORG, freebsd-hackers@FreeBSD.ORG
Subject:   Re: MAIL set by whom?
Message-ID:  <3A6B042E.659C716D@nisser.com>
References:  <3A6A50F3.307C9E06@nisser.com> <20010121103324.A297@frolic.no-support.loc>

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Bjoern Fischer wrote:
> 
> > ...
> > So what gives? (IOW please help! :)
> 
> You can set MAIL via /etc/login.conf, all applications that use
> either login(1) or setusercontext(3) should work.
> 
> Beware of ssh! The OpenSSH client, that is part of FreeBSD is
> completey buggy here: It sets MAIL to /var/mail/$USER, this is
> hardcoded. I have a dirty fix, maybe I'll clean it up and
> send it as a PR or to Kris (Kris, are you still ssh maintainer?)

And guess what I'm using ;). But that explains it. Thanks for
reminding me.

> This whole stuff of initial user environment and friends has
> to be cleaned up to be consistent for all login methods: login(1),
> xdm, rsh, rlogin, ssh, telnet. I would volunteer(sic!) for a in detail
> analysis of this issue if I get feedback on this. (i.e. looking for
> inconsistencies, where to put on solutions (e.g. a pam module
> that evals /etc/login.conf via setusercontext(3)).

Grand gesture. Laudable even. Yeah, that PAM sure seems to've
become popular. The Courier IMAP port also insisted upon its
installation. Insisted in that fiddling with the makefile only
resulted in failure to configure. But that's a whole different
story.

> To fiddle with user's .bash{rc,_profile}, .tcshrc, .whateverrc
> is the wrong way. Some rc files are not evaluated for non login shells,
> so you put it into .bashrc or whatever get executed for non login
> shells; if you do this you parameters will be overwritten each time
> you start a new shell (e.g. xterm).

Sure, but it does the trick for now.

> The user should have a minimal reasonable environment (even without
> shell rc files, if you want to go that far), that he/she may optionally
> extend or adapt. /etc/login.conf, maybe in combination with pam, is
> the right thing for doing this.

Mebbe. But just like there's PAM, there's also LDAP and let us
not forget Kerberos. Played with them, once upon a time, but not
enough to have a feel for their possible impacts. Just be careful
with what you volunteer for! ;).

Roelof

-- 
Home is where the (@) http://eboa.com/ is.
Nisser home -- http://www.Nisser.com/


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