System-wide .login?

[Robert Claeson]

In a recent article SYKLB%NASAGISS.BITNET at cunyvm.cuny.edu ( Ken Bell) writes:

>On Fri, 2 Nov 90 19:16:00 EST Bill Wine, system manager, 437-7226 said:
>>When a user logs in to the C-shell, the files .cshrc and .login are executed.
>>Is there a way to have a file (other than login) run when each user logs in?
>>In other words, is there a Unix file equivalent to sylogin.com in the VMS
>>world?

>How about --  'ln -s .login some_other_file' ?
>Or, simply have .login do nothing else but exec your preferred file?

>(What's "sylogin.com" and why is it better than ".login" ?!)

Syslogin.com is a system-wide login file that gets executed before
the user's own login file is run. Its purpose is for the system
admins to be able to set up reasonable defaults for applications,
establish commands, logicals and the like (ie, search paths and
environment variables in UNIX lingo). Thus, a user need only 
edit his or her own login file if he or she wishes to change a default
or logical defined in syslogin.com, or to add more private commands
and logicals.

Csh doesn't have anything similar, but Bourne and Korn shell do,
at least under System V. The file /etc/profile serves the same
purpose as syslogin.com.

-- 
Robert Claeson                  |Reasonable mailers: rclaeson at erbe.se
ERBE DATA AB                    |      Dumb mailers: rclaeson%erbe.se at sunet.se
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These opinions reflect my personal views and not those of my employer.