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Customising the scripts for a group of users

You can customise the environment for a group of users, independently of the service on which they will run. Of course each service must run the HEPiX scripts but, if there are different groups of users who are working on a service, it is important that you keep stability in the environment of the group of users you are supporting.

Thus there exists a 'group level' in the HEPiX scripts in which you can specify specific group variables, specific programs to run at login, specific shell settings (refer to figure 1).

At cern, the default value for the variable GROUP_DIR is /afs/cern.ch/group/gidname. For example it could be /afs/cern.ch/group/c3. All the files which are there are your files, they will be executed by all the users who are belonging to 'c3' unix group. Of course, if a machine is not an AFS client but supports group specifications like in /u/c3/pubc3 then you simply can ask that the value of GROUP_DIR is reset to /u/$GROUP/pub$GROUP by the administrator of the machine (see 3.1.1).

All the files which you can customise are the same as in 3.1 but their names start with the prefix group_. For example, if under /afs/cern.ch/group/c3 you put two files group_sys.conf.csh and group_sys.conf.sh where you set specific environment variables for the group c3, these file will be executed by the shell.

The special variable GROUPPATH enables you to insert a group specific PATH in the CERN default USERPATH variable. For example, you can set

       setenv GROUPPATH /afs/cern.ch/group/c3/bin
in group_sys.conf.csh

and
\verb+GROUPPATH=/afs/cern.ch/group/c3/bin; export GROUPPATH+
in group_sys.conf.sh

This means that the PATH will look like (when logged in):
/afs/cern.ch/user/t/taddei/bin:/afs/cern.ch/user/t/taddei:scripts/afs/cern.ch/group/c3/bin:
/usr/sue/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/ucb:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/bin/X11:/cern/pro/bin:.
for an AIX machine.

You can do all sorts of things, like having one more indirections to subgroups in one group as far as you are able to distinguish them.

Examples:
                       source                           
   group_env.[c]sh    --------->  $MY_GROUP.env.[c]sh   

                       source                           
   group_login.[c]sh  --------->  $MY_GROUP.login.[c]sh

This is very convenient if you want to have an indirection to some group-test directory where you can test your group setting for your users.

For X11 customisation, simply look at what is explained in 3.1.3 and replace /etc/hepix by the location of your group customisation directory (for example /afs/cern.ch/group/c3). Don't forget to consult table 3 in order to get all the required file names for the group customisation of the X11 part (group_xprofile, group_xclients, group_xclients.m).




next up previous contents
Next: Formal description of Up: Customisation Previous: Customising the scripts



Arnaud Taddei
Tue Dec 12 08:15:58 MET 1995