On 20Feb2018 11:46, robert p. j. day <rpjday@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
On Tue, 20 Feb 2018, David King wrote:On 02/20/2018 09:44 AM, Robert P. J. Day wrote: > "Each user can create several user profiles for business or personal > use." > > i'm still reading but i've seen nothing yet that supports that > interpretation. > That language isn't clear to me either. The following things cross my mind as possibilities: * Bash login profiles. This doc is an example of describing these as user profiles: http://linux-training.be/security/ch04.html * LDAP directory user entities, groups (roles) and profile/directory metadata, assuming the *nix system tied to an LDAP for authentication * Mail client profiles (ex. I have separate business and personal identities defined in Thunderbird)i finished the section ... it dealt only with customizing /etc/skel, /etc profile, and so on and so on, all standard stuff ... completely misleading reference to "user profiles." grrrrrrrr ...
I think you're right - the courseware is only talking about the typical shell setup files.
Of course one _can_ make some additional scripts to source for special purposes. I've got a little command named "dev" which hacks my $PATH, $PYTHONPATH etc to have my current code directory parts mentioned at the front in order to run the code I'm hacking, versus the stable code installed in the usual places like ~/bin. One might consider such a thing an additional profile in the context you seem to describe.
Or, of course, the courseware might have been written by someone without proper understanding. That happens. Consider the basics written by an engineer or other specialist, later cleaned up/tweaked by a tech writer.
Personally I'd describe the shell login process to the students (/etc/profile, ~/.profile etc), explain that this varies a little depending on the shell (eg ~/.bash_profile), and explain that these are nothing more than scripts that are sourced to set up $PATH etc.
So while _these_ scripts constitute a profile in that they're run automatically for a login shell, in principle the "profile" (the current settings of $PATH and friends) can be further changed at any point as they see fit, and for common purposes one might keep a special purpose script around to do just that.
For myself, I sometimes keep a client/employer related script that hooks my shell into the environment I'm using to work on their stuff. Very handy to get predictable behaviour.
Cheers, Cameron Simpson <cs@xxxxxxxxxx> (formerly cs@xxxxxxxxxx) _______________________________________________ users mailing list -- users@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx To unsubscribe send an email to users-leave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
