Vineet Kumar wrote: > Kevin McKinley wrote: > > Bob Proulx wrote: > > > Really? Can someone point me to documentation or standards which > > > describes the use and behavior of /etc/environment? > > > > /etc/environment seems to be an AIXism that's migrating to > > Linux. Googling on "/etc/environment" will get you links to user > > information at universities with AIX systems.
Let me admit to being somewhat of a troll. I am actually familiar with AIX and use of /etc/environment there. Programs that grew up on AIX support it. Some others that have been ported to it support as well. But few others even know about it and why should they? It is an AIX only construct which has propagated to a small extent beyond it but only to a very small extent. It can't even claim to be a defacto standard. But if someone could point me to any standards work that referenced it I was certainly interested in being educated if any such material existed. > Specifically, it looks like it's used by the pam_env module. [...] > The only mention I found regarding debian policy was a note from 1999 > saying "we have no policy for /etc/environment, and we should." The /etc/environment file is one of those things that people often quote as the place to do something like set environment variables without realizing its state of quasi-existence. But it is not a traditional UNIX place to set environment variables and so generally there is no widespread acceptance of it and no standards that say anyone even should. There is almost no documentation on it. The format of the file is almost completely guesswork. There are no standard methods to load data from it. All of those things would make me too nervous to actually use it. I would not recommend anyone use /etc/environment at this time when it is in such a poor state of documentation, with such a lack of standardization and with such a low amount of general acceptance. Bob
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