Path: utzoo!utgpu!water!watmath!clyde!att!osu-cis!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!mailrus!uflorida!haven!ncifcrf!nlm-mcs!adm!smoke!gwyn From: gwyn@smoke.ARPA (Doug Gwyn ) Newsgroups: comp.unix.wizards Subject: Re: Info on BRL shell Message-ID: <8553@smoke.ARPA> Date: 21 Sep 88 01:49:32 GMT References: <406@marob.MASA.COM> <8473@smoke.ARPA> <12192@steinmetz.ge.com> Reply-To: gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB)) Organization: Ballistic Research Lab (BRL), APG, MD. Lines: 21 In article <12192@steinmetz.ge.com> davidsen@crdos1.UUCP (bill davidsen) writes: >In article <8473@smoke.ARPA> gwyn@brl.arpa (Doug Gwyn (VLD/VMB) ) writes: >| If the super-user's $PS1 does not end in "# ", it is appended as a >| safety reminder. >God save me from people who assume that I'm so stupid that I don't know >how to set up a shell prompt, and who mess with my environment variables. That feature was in the BRL Bourne shell before I got here and they insisted on leaving it in when I upgraded to a more recent base shell. The default timeout for the super-user is also much less than for normal users. If one didn't have to become super-user very often, this stuff wouldn't be necessary. But it does come in handy for improved system security; in our multi-window networked environment it is easy to forget that one has a privileged window on some system, unless there is some visible reminder. The added-"# " feature is #ifdef BRL so you can avoid it if you don't like it. In fact non-BRL sites are advised to omit -DBRL from the Makefile to disable all local "administrative policy" decisions built into the shell. The notes I posted should have said that the feature is optional; I'll take your complaint as an action item for the notes.