[openssh-unix-dev] AIX reading /etc/environment out of step.

[David Bronder]

The /etc/environment file is an AIX-ism that is basically used to
set system-wide environment variable defaults.  In the case of
interactive sessions via telnet or rlogin, I believe it is the
telnetd or rlogind which reads that file, so sshd would have to do
the same thing.

Poor design choice, perhaps, and I could also be wrong about where
/etc/environment really gets read (I haven't done any specific
testing of it).  But by reading it in do_child() you pick up any
changes to the file without having to restart the parent sshd even
if it originally gets read somewhere else.

=Dave

mouring at etoh.eviladmin.org wrote:
> 
> I was discussing with Don about a private topic..and while skimming the
> code I noticed that during a 'ssh mouring at site ls'  the /etc/environment
> is *ONLY* read if the remote machine is an AIX box.  This is undocumented
> and I'm wondering if someone using AIX could explain WHY it exists in the
> session.c:do_child()?  No other OS has this.  I don't see why AIX should
> require it.
> 
> Can someone JUSTIFY this to me the fact we are going against our own
> documentation for a single platform?


-- 
Hello World.                                    David Bronder - Systems Admin
Segmentation Fault                                     ITS-SPA, Univ. of Iowa
Core dumped, disk trashed, quota filled, soda warm.   david-bronder at uiowa.edu