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.