Archive-name: unix-faq/programmer/application-principles Version: $Id: wtua,v 1.15 2000/01/21 11:57:58 rsk Exp $ Copyright Rich Kulawiec, 1997, 1998, 1999, 2000. [ January 2000 update: currently being rewritten. ] READ THIS NOTE: I receive an average of hundreds of mail messages per day. If you want to make sure that your update/correction/reply to this article comes to my attention when I'm working on the next version, please send your message as a reply to this article, i.e. make absolutely certain that you preserve the "Subject:" line. If you don't do this, your reply may sit in one of my numerous mail queues for months or even years. Please don't send an update more than once -- doing so only adds to the queue that I have to process when doing updates. If you want to make certain that I've received something, then make a note of the information on the "Version:" line above. If it has changed when you next see this article, and your information isn't included, then I've missed it. Otherwise, it's safe to presume I've got it and it's queued for inclusion. The FAQ may be reproduced and propagated via http, ftp, gopher or other common Internet protocols by anyone provided that (1) it is reproduced in its entirety (2) no fee is charged for access to it and (3) it's kept up-to-date. This latter is probably best accomplished by mirroring one of the FAQ archives -- that way you'll get a new copy everytime I update it, which is approximately monthly. (If you do put it up on the web, I'd like to know the URL, but that's not a requirement. It just would be nice.) Reproduction of this FAQ on paper, CDROM or other media which are sold is permissible only with the express written consent of its author. If you are reading a copy of this document which appears to be out-of-date, there are a variety of methods that you can use to retrieve the most current method. If you are familiar with access to the FAQ archives via mail, ftp, and www, then you already know how. If not, then send email to [email protected] with the command "send usenet/news.answers/news-answers/introduction" in the message, and a complete guide to FAQ retrieval will be mailed to you. Q. Why does this document exist? A. This is an attempt to spell out some general principles that Unix application developers should consider in order to make the products of their work portable, easy to install and maintain, and flexible. It's somewhat targeted toward developers of commercial software, although folks developing freely-available code may also find some guidance here. Much of it is opinion -- but a lot of that opinion has been formed by people who have installed hundreds of software packages on dozens of varieties of Unix. The intention here isn't to inflict capricious whims on software developers; the intention is to keep them from doing the same to system administrators. Q. What should I assume about current OS releases? A. That they'll change. ;-) More seriously, the Unix world is one of short release cycles; Sun's Solaris 2.7 is now being widely deployed and we're already seeing reports on future beta releases. Locking one's software into the specific features of a release is generally a Bad Thing. There's also the question of deprecated releases (e.g. SunOS) and newly-emerging ones (e.g. SUSE Linux). Generally speaking, the tradeoff is one of trying to exploit the unique features of OS's for maximum programmatic advantage vs. trying to keep code as simple and as portable as possible. Your editor strongly recommends the latter and suggests that necessary performance criteria can almost always be met by a combination of other means, e.g. better choice of algorithm, optimizing compilers, hardware upgrades, and so on. Q. What about all those standards? A. In general, software packages should attempt to comply as much as is practical with the prevailing Unix software standards: POSIX 1003.1, POSIX 1003.3, SVID, and XPG. Unfortunately, these comprise a maze of overlapping and occasionally conflicting requirements. One way out of that maze is to try, as much as possible, to avoid developing products which rely on features over which there is disagreement. Obvious, and easier said than done, but when there are major differences of opinion among standardization efforts, it may be better to duck the issue rather than contest it. Q. What about the windowing system environment? A. Applications should be compatible with currently shipping X-based window environments from various vendors, some of which are based on X11R4, some on X11R5, and some on X11R6. In general, attempts to support and utilize the features of X11R6 are encouraged. Applications should work with any window manager, e.g. olwm, twm, etc. Compliance with the ICCCM standard will assist with this. Q. What about the Networking environment? A. Use of Internet standard protocols and mechanisms are *highly* encouraged. This includes: SMTP (See RFC 821, 822) for mail NNTP (See RFC's 977 and 1036) for news Telnet (See RFC's 854, 855) for interactive login FTP (See RFC 959) for file transfer HTTP (See RFC 2068) for WWW services NTP (See RFC's 1129, 1305) for time synchronization DNS (See RFC 1032, 1033) for hostname resolution SSH (See RFC ????) Also, RFC 1123 ("Requirements for Internet hosts - application and support") should be studied and its requirements adhered to as much as possible. Use of the NIS/NIS+ environment should be selectable; i.e. the installer of the software package should be presented with the option to utilize NIS/NIS+ services at the time of the installation. No package should require explicit entries in the local system's /etc/hosts file. Kerberos support is encouraged. Use of NFS is ubiquitous, and all software packages should operate with NFS in a transparent manner but should not *require* it. Use of NFS 3.0 features where they are available is a good idea. In addition, software packages should cooperate with the automounter; in particular, there must be provisions to ensure that the physical mount point of the package (e.g. <servername>:/<directory>/<package-name>) may be different that logical automount point of the package (e.g. /home/<package-name>). Two issues that often arise with NFS are: 1. A "pwd" executed in an automounted directory will show something like /tmp_mnt/server/export/foo even though the directory is really mounted on /import/foo 2. If NFS is used with the default options that most Unixes employ, UID 0 (root) maps to UID -1 (nobody, or 65534). in other words, root access to an NFS-mounted filesystem sometimes requires remounting the filesystem with different options, or - if that can't be done - executing part of an installation script/procedure on another machine. Use of RFS and Andrew distributed filesystems should be optional, as these filesystems are not universally supported. (This isn't a comment on the merits of those filesystems, by the way: it's just an observation on their propagation.) An application which requires the of temporary "scratch" disk space should allow that space to be resident anywhere on the local (executing) machine. The way that some programs do this (e.g. GNU's gcc) is to use the environment variables "TMPDIR" -- which gives the name of the directory to use for "scratch" space. On that topic -- and on mkstemp()/mktemp() -- let me quote Paul D. Smith: ALL_ programs that attempt to creat temp files should honor this variable. Also, _all_ programs that need temporary files should use the mkstemp() function if available, or the mktemp() function if not, to get a temporary filename. This can help avoid security problems, denial-of-service attacks, etc. Paul goes on to mention that he thinks this is a POSIX function; I think so, too; are we right? (I can't find my copy of the POSIX standard this afternoon.) Applications should also work seamlessly with memory-resident filesystems (e.g. Sun's tmpfs). Use of interprocess communication facilities should be carefully done in order to avoid collision with port numbers assigned by the Internet Assigned Numbers Authority. Ideally, applications should allow the installer to specify port numbers used. Applications which need to function in a firewalled environment should provide proxies. Q. What about licensing mechanisms? A. Use of standard network-based licensing mechanisms, for example FlexLM, is HIGHLY encouraged. (Although it needs to be noted that most FlexLM implementations rely on hostid locking for the license server. This isn't a limitation of FlexLM: it's possible to give out keys which aren't locked to a particular machine by using the ANY keyword in the hostid field. However, vendors fear that people will set up license servers on multiple machines, and thus steal their products. Thanks to Mark C. Henderson for pointing this out.) Licensing methods which rely in any part on hostname, IP address, hostid, username, or userid are discouraged because they tend to cause nightmares for system administrators when they have to change machines, or subnets, or any of the other myriad things that are part of evolving networks. All that said, consider that it's possible for sufficiently smart and motivated programmers/administrators to bypass just about any licensing mechanism. Depending on what your product is, and what the intended user community is, it may be easier to just skip the entire exercise. Q. What about the Unix environment in general? A. While the user of a dedicated loginname/uid to provide administration within a package is acceptable, no loginname/uid should be mandated. In other words, if a database application is designed to be administered by an end-user account, the loginname/uid/groupname/gid of that account must be selectable by the installer and no constraints should be placed upon it. No package should require users to have a particular loginname/uid/gid in order to utilize any feature of that package. (Obvious exceptions would include system administration tools that require root priviledges to execute certain commands, modify certain files, etc.) Every application should make extreme attempts to avoid changes to the / or /usr filesystems; these are reserved for the Unix operating system, and are not appropriate installation locations for 3rd-party software. (This comment doesn't apply to /usr/local, which is the de facto standard for the installation of non-OS software.) Applications which require daemons to be launched at boot time should NOT modify /etc/rc.local (or its equivalent) in order to accomplish this; they should generate the appropriate /bin/sh fragment and request that the installer manually edit the appropriate files -- or provide the option for the installer to examine the fragment and then have it installed in /etc/rc.local. For System-V style systems, the install script could generate the appropriate startup script, allow the installer to examine it, and then install it in the appropriate directories (e.g. /etc/rc/rc1.d, /etc/rc/rc2.d, and so on). (In fact, most Unixes and Linuxes are migrating to this sort of startup, so it's probably preferable to use this facility over the BSD one, if it's available.) The reason for this is that it's difficult for an installation script to figure out enough about a particular machine's configuration to determine just where such startup code should be placed. Allowing the installer to interact with this process and/or to handle this step semi-manually is often necessary. This isn't to say that a non-interactive way of handling this can't be included too -- because that's handy for non-interactive installs. Similar comments apply to /etc/inetd.conf, /etc/services, /etc/fstab, and other critical files. All packages should be installable at any point in the directory structure. No packages should require the creation of hard links, symbolic links, directories, or files on client (diskless or dataless) client workstations. No hardwired pathnames should exist inside the application. (That's what environment variables and "dotfiles" are for; see below. There's debate on this point, I should note: some folks contend that "configurable at run time" is a bad idea or impossible for setuid programs. I think that a setuid program can read everything it needs from a config file whose pathname is hardwired into it -- which means that it doesn't strictly adhere to this principle, but it comes pretty close.) Timothy J. Lee points out (and I agree with him) that: "One point of annoyance with some programs is shared libraries, since if the program is not compiled with the correct rpath, the user must have the LD_LIBRARY_PATH environment variable set to find all of the proper shared libraries. Freeware programs should take that into account and set the rpath properly when linking. Binary distributions are in a tougher situation, especially if it is not known where the program will be installed." Use of application-specific environment variables should be minimized; applications which require large numbers of per-user variables to be initialized should utilize a "dotfile" or a wrapper instead. For example, the Foobar software package might use a .foobarrc which contains initialization information for that application. Appropriate provisions for host-wide and site-wide instantiations of these files should be provided, e.g. the X11 .Xdefaults/"app-defaults"/command-line-option mechanism. Wrappers are shell scripts (or Perl scripts, or other kinds of scripts) which set the appropriate environment variables and then call the real application. For example, a package containing commands called "foo1", "foo2", and "foo3" might put the real executables in /usr/local/lib/foo-app/foo1 /usr/local/lib/foo-app/foo2 /usr/local/lib/foo-app/foo3 and install a shell script in /usr/local/bin, hardlinked to foo1, foo2, and foo3, which looks something like: #!/bin/sh FOOENV=/foo/bar ANOTHERFOOENV=fred export FOOENV ANOTHERFOOENV exec /usr/local/lib/foo-app/`basename $0` This provides a single point-of-entry to all of the sub-applications in the package, avoids cluttering the user's environment, and makes life much easier for system admins. Additionally, no application should modify a users's existing "dotfiles", e.g. ".cshrc", but should intead confine changes to an application-specific dotfile. In any case, any application-specific environment variables should be carefully distinguished from those which might be utilized by another application. For example, FOOBAR_DIRECTORY is vastly preferable to DIRECTORY. It is permissible for an application to use well-known, standard environment variables (e.g. EDITOR) but it should not create or modify these. Use of non-standard printing mechanisms is highly discouraged. Applications should spool using the standard lp or lpd print commands. Ralf Fassel adds "In addition, the print command itself should be configurable, not only the printer name. We have our own cross-platform mechanism to select the printer according to the document type. Each vendor has its own mechanism, and it's a nightmare to set up all the /etc/printcap's or /var/spool/lp/interface files." And I concur with him. The executables within an application (binaries, shell scripts, Perl scripts, etc.) should be carefully scrutinized to ensure that their names do not overlap with standard Unix commands or with vendor-supplied Unix commands. (Note: add list of commands in appendix) The use of custom kernels should be avoided if possible; in particular, the use of special device drivers for reasons other than special hardware is highly discouraged, as this makes life very difficult for large sites, especially when they attempt to upgrade their OS version. Under no circumstances should an application replace any of the normal commands (e.g. those in /usr/bin) with its own. If for some reason, an application requires a modified version of such a command, it should reside in the application's own directory tree and should be clearly identified at the time of the installation. (This lets users select which version of a command they wish to run based on $path.) Applications should make no requirements on the filesystem/network architecture; in other words, a switched/routed network consisting of diskless, dataless, and dataful nodes with local and remote / and /usr partitions using hard-mounted and automounted filesystems should run the application seamlessly. (But it should be noted that for some applications, NFS, due to its basic design, probably just won't work.) Applications should preserve localization options when upgraded versions are installed. Harald Kirsch notes -- and I think he's quite right -- that: "No executable (or shell script) should try to guess the package's installation directory from argv[0] (or $0), because due to (soft) links or mounting, the directory part of the name might be totally misleading. Use environment variables instead." Q. What about accounting and security mechanisms? A. Use of standard Unix accounting methods is highly encouraged. No application should require weakening of network security by mandating use of /etc/hosts.equiv, /.rhosts, or ~<user>/.rhosts. Applications should utilize standard Unix security mechanisms, such as /etc/group, whenever possible. This implies that applications understand the limits on these mechanisms, e.g. MAXGROUPS. No assumptions about the current state of any user's umask should be made. The installation script should explicitly specify the permissions and ownerships of all files and directories; these should be set in order to provide the maximum possible data security without rendering the application non-functional. In particular, no application should require write access for its users anywhere in its own directory tree. The use of the setuid/setgid bits should be carefully limited. Setuid/setgid shell scripts be avoided if at all possible -- especially since some Unix implementations don't support them at all. The location of "lockfiles" should be configurable, as should the mechanism (e.g. flock(), lockf(), etc.) Frank da Cruz points out (and I think he's right, although I sure wish he wasn't) that "This is, of course, a hornet's nest. Even if I configure an application to use the politically correct lockfile conventious du jour, they will change out from under the application I just installed when I install a new OS release or even another application (uucp lockfiles are the worst)." So maybe I should back off a bit on my statement about lockfiles; is there a way out of this that doesn't put the application developer in the position of trying to outguess the installer? Applications should not require the user to grant general read/write/execute permission to his or her own directory tree. Q. Are there any other general comments? A. If shell scripts are supplied as part of a package, the Bourne shell is preferred. If source code is supplied as part of a package, ANSI C/C++ is preferred. Use of Perl should be carefully considered, as it is not yet shipped with all production Unix releases. But it is easily available and since it's GPL'd, it can be included with software distributions. Applications should suppport transparent data interchange between releases and platforms. For example, a Sun running Solaris 2.7 should be able to use the client side of a database package to interrogate a database server running on Red Hat Linux 5.2. The use of flexible, informative, and easily customizable installation scripts such as the those supplied wilth Perl 5.0 or the GNU tools is highly encouraged. (These scripts actively seek out system information and interact with the installer in order to confirm that the automated installation will be based on verified data.) Q. What about installation procedures? A. Application installation guides should clearly identify the following: Operating system requirements (including revision #) Operating system options requirement (many OS's do not require full installation, need to know which OS features must be installed to support application) Operating system patches required (should reference vendor's #) Required kernel configuration/changes Windowing system requirements Required daemons/services (e.g. /etc/services, /etc/inetd.conf, /etc/rc.local) Required utilities Supported hardware platforms Supported hardware options (e.g. graphics) Memory/disk/swap requirements for minimum functionality/full-blown install, including use of temporary/scratch file system space. Estimates of user data storage requirements based on usage. Performance characterization in different local/network architectures with suggestions for first-order performance tuning. Installation procedures should be informative and include provisions for soft failure in the event of a problem. Logging of the installation process should be done in order to enable post-mortem analysis. Installation procedures should be fully executable by the "application maintenance account", which will probably not be root, if it's at all possible to do so. (And that's probably not possible for programs that need to work with more than one UID.) Accordingly, any installation-related changes which require root access must be clearly identified (e.g. modififying /etc/group, /etc/services). Any application procedures which must be executed by root should be scripts and *not* binaries -- in order to allow the system administrator to examine them before running them. If for some reason, a binary executable is necessary, then full source code and a Makefile should be provided in order to enable compilation on the local machine. Installation procedures should support a "deinstall" facility. Peter da Silva points out that "Ideally this should be a script that can be eyeball-executed in case the system isn't entirely stable when cleanup time arrives, rather than a binary." I think what Peter means by that is that an admin who is trying to deal with a system whose state is confused or unknown would probably feel much better manually executing the commands in the script one by one, rather than having to execute the entire script -- or worse, a binary whose precise actions are unknown. Installation procedures should work with local and remote devices, e.g. tape and cdrom. Install procedures should be scriptable and executable in a non-interactive way. Non-interactive install capability helps a system administrator who is setting up a large number of computers, each with the same package. (Or, as Greg Lindahl put it, "[...] remember that some sites may want to install your product on 1,000 servers. Forcing them to reverse-engineer your installation procedure will not make friends.") Q. How should I track revision levels on my package? A. This is a thorny question, to which the best answer is "simply". Your editor would like to recommend the following standard for all Unix software packages: <Release>.<Patchlevel> e.g. foolib-4.13 would be release 4, patchlevel 13 of the foolib package. Your editor finds revision numbers like 5.004_03 or 0.99.6 too cryptic to be useful to anyone but the packages' authors, and suspects that many of his colleagues feel the same way. Your editor feels he has suddenly started writing like Miss Manners and needs to stop. Now. Q. Is there a way to provide pointers to new version of packages? A. The answer to this one -- in the case of freeware packages, like the ones that comprise Linux, comes from HЕvard Lygre: "I am running RedHat Linux on one of my servers, and see the need for upgrading the software from time to time (especially as I am using development kernels, which need newer versions of a lot of the packages). However, a lot of the time, _none_ of the files included says anything about where new versions of the software can be downloaded. As an example, I will use the net-tools package for linux. This package contains programs like route, ifconfig, hostname etc. I have previously downloaded a net-tools package, however, with the development of new kernels, there was a need for the newest. However, in _none_ of the README, INSTALL etc. files in the source tree of the previous net-tools package, was there an ftp or http address. There was the e-mail address of the author/maintainer, but that's not the kind of questions you like to be bothered with when you are a developer! Of course, I was able to find the package after doing a search, but that should really not be necessary. When the package provides README's INSTALL's etc., there should also be an URL of where you can get the newest version." My comment? Yes, that would be awfully handy. An option like "-u" for "emit the URL where this package can be found" would be very nice. On the other hand, web locations for packages change so often that it could also become a maintenance nightmare for the developer. So I think that this *might* work if we all agree that the URL that's embedded is the one of the (primary) site where the software package could be found *as of the time it was downloaded*. In other words, the URL given is understood to be "where I came from" which might not be the same as "where I can be found today". Comments, anybody? Q. Whew! Anything else? A. Oh my yes. I'm sure that while you're reading this my mailbox is filling up with comments. But you'll have to wait until the next revision to read them. :-) Q. Did you do this by yourself? A. Oh my no. Among the people who have helped with comments and fixes and things that I needed to think about in earlier revisions are: Chris Siebenmann, Alan Rollow, Jonathan Spangler, Mark C. Henderson, Timothy J. Lee, Pete Forman, Paul D. Smith, Greg Lindahl, Peter da Silva, Frank da Cruz, D. J. Bernstein, Harald Kirsch, Ralf Fassel, Wim Vandeputte, HЕvard Lygre. . If there's any usefulness in this document, it's because of their help. The mistakes are still my fault, though. ;-) --------------------------------------------------------------------- | NOTE: The following four appendices list common names for | | configuration files, environment variables, file suffixes, and | | file names. I'm well aware that they're incomplete. Additions | | are quite welcome. | --------------------------------------------------------------------- Appendix I: Configuration Files/Directories A number of UNIX programs utilize configuration files (or "dot files", so called because their names usually begin with a .) to customize their behavior. These files usually are located in a user's home (login) directory; some of them (and their purpose) are given below. Note that some applications have taken to using "dot directories" because they have so much information to store -- often including state information that persists between instantiations of the application -- that it would clutter up the user's home directory. So intead it winds up in a subdirectory; for example, Netscape's web browser likes to keep things in ".netscape". Application developers shouldn't necessarily count on these being present -- but may use them if they are. They certainly shouldn't name their own files in conflict with these names; and they should avoid modifying these files if at all possible. .acrorc, .acrosrch Used by Adobe Acrobat PDF reader. .Arena Used by the Arena web browser .article Location of saved (posted) articles; used by Pnews. .bash_profile .bashrc Startup information for GNU bash shell. .bash_history Command history for GNU bash shell. .bookmarks Used by Sun's AnswerBook applications. .cshrc Initialization for instances of csh. .dbxinit Startup commands and aliases for the dbx debugger. .dddinit Startup commands and aliases for the ddd debugger. .desksetdefaults Startup options for Sun deskset tools. .dtprofile Startup for CDE on Solaris. .elmrc Initialization for the Elm mail client. .errorrc Functions for error to ignore. .exrc Initialization and macros for vi, edit, ex and view. .fetchmailrc Configuration information for the fetchmail POP/IMAP client. .forward Forwarding address for incoming mail, or the name of a program to which incoming mail should be sent. .gimp .gimprc Used by the GNU Image Manipulation Program. .gnupg GNU implementation of PGP. .gopherc Start up info for gopher clients. .history Saved command history across login sessions (csh). .hostaliases Shorthand names for hosts. .hushlogin Suppress printing of /etc/motd on login. .indent.pro Initialization for indent. .ircrc Startup of ircII .kermrc Standard Kermit initialization file .learnrc Used by learn to mark progress. .less .lessrc Used by the "less" paginator. .letter Location of saved (sent) letters; used by Pnews, rn, tin. .lisprc Initialization for Franz Liszt (lisp) sessions. .lynrc Initialization for the Lynx web browser. .login Initialization for csh login sessions. .logout Commands to execute at end of csh login sessions. .mailcap MIME definitions used by various applications .mailrc Berkeley mailer options and aliases (Mail). .mh_profile MH mailer options. .mhrc MH mailer aliases. .muttrc Initialization for the mutt mail client. .mykermrc Personal Kermit customization file .newsrc News articles read; used by rn, vnews and readnews. .netrc Remote login initialization for ftp. .netscape .netscape-bookmarks.html Used by Netscape web browser .openwin-init Startup info for Sun's OpenWindows. .openwin-menu Menu for Sun's OpenWindows. .pinerc Used by the "pine" mail client. .plan User's planned absences, contact information, etc.; printed by finger. .pnewsexpert Used by Pnews to track user expertise. .procmailrc Initialization and configuration for the procmail mail filter. .profile Initialization for login sessions using sh. .project User's current work area (project); used by finger. .qmail Used by the QMAIL mail package. .raplayer .raplayer30 Used by the RealAudio player. .rhosts List of pairs of login names/machine names allowed access to this account without a password via rlogin, rsh, and rcp. .signature User's signature and electronic address; appended by postnews and Pnews. .smrc Used by Peter da Silva's Session Manager tool. .ssh Used by the "secure shell". .rnhead, .rnlast, .rnlock, .rnmac, .rnsoft Used by various versions of rn/trn/strn news-reading software. .tcl Tool Command Language script. .tin Startup file for the "tin" news-reading client. .tiprc Used by cu, tip. .tgz Gzipped archive created by gnutar. .tkman Used by the tkman program (TK interface to manual pages). .vimrc Used by "vim", an implementation of the vi editor. .workmanrc, .workmandb Configuration and database for the Workman audio CD player. .Xauthority Used for security by X window system. .Xdefaults Configuration info for X window systems and X applications. .xinitrc Startup information for the X window system. Appendix II: Environment Variables An array of strings called the environment is made available to each process started by Unix. These strings are used to provide information such as terminal type, default editor, preferred mailer, and so on. Most users set their environment in either .login (if they use csh) or .profile (if they use sh). Some common environment variables: ABHOME Sun's AnswerBook. ATTRIBUTION Format of attribution line in quoted article (rn/trn/xrn) AUTHORCOPY Where Pnews saves posted articles. BIN Number to be placed on the top of printer listings. CANCELHEADER Format of file to pass to CANCEL (rn/trn/xrn) DOTDIR Location of news-related files; used by rn/trn/xrn, Pnews, Rnmail. EDITOR User's preferred editor. EXINIT Startup commands read by ex, edit, view and vi. FIRSTLINE Format of first line of article displayed (rn/trn/xrn) GR_HOME Location of librariers for xmgr/xvgr data visualization tools. GS_LIB GNU ghostscript library directory. HELPDIR Help files for X windows applications HIDELINE Regular expression describing article lines to suppress (rn/trn/xrn) HOME User's home (login) directory. HOSTALIASES Location of .hostaliases file HTTP_PROXY Used by various web browsers to give host/port for HTTP proxy services. INSTALL Flags to initialize install. KILLGLOBAL Location of global kill file (rn/trn/xrn) KILLLOCAL Location of per-newsgroup kill file(s) (rn/trn/xrn) LD_LIBRARY_PATH Path to search for dynamically loadable libraries. LESS Flags to provide to the GNU "less" pager. MAIL Location of incoming mail. MAILER Default mailing program to use. MAILCALL What to say when there is new mail. (rn/trn/xrn) MAILFILE Where to check for mail. (rn/trn/xrn) MAILHEADER The format of the header file for replies. (rn/trn/xrn) MAILPOSTER Shell command used by reply (via mail) command (rn/trn/xrn) MAILRECORD Saved (sent) mail (Rnmail) MANPATH Path to search for manual pages. MBOXSAVER The shell command to save an article in mailbox format. (rn/trn/xrn) MORE Flags to provide to the "more" pager. MOZILLA_HOME Netscape's installed location. NAME User's real name. NEWSHEADER The format of the header file for followups. (rn/trn/xrn) NEWSPOSTER The shell command to be used by the followup commands (rn/trn/xrn) NEWSRC Location of news control file. NNTPSERVER Name/IP address of host providing NNTP services. NORMSAVER The shell command to save an article in the normal format (rn/trn/xrn) OPENWINHOME Sun, installation directory of OpenWindows. ORGANIZATION User's organization; used by Mail and news programs. PAGER User's preferred pagination (terminal file display) program. PAGESTOP Regular expression matching lines as page breaks (rn/trn/xrn) Are you beginning to get the idea that maybe rn/trn/xrn got just a little carried away with environment variables? PATH The sequence of directory prefixes that sh, csh, etc., apply in searching for a file known by an incomplete path name. The prefixes are separated by : for sh, and by spaces for csh. PERLLIB Perl library directory. PIPESAVER Shell command to save via a pipe. (rn/trn/xrn) PRINTER User's default printer. RNINIT Initialization string for rn. RNMACRO Location of files with macros and key maps. (rn/trn/xrn) SAVEDIR Directory for saved news articles from rn/trn/xrn. SAVENAME The name of the file to save to, if unspecified (rn/trn/xrn). SHELL The file name of the user's login shell. SUBJLINE Controls the format of lines displayed by "=" (rn/trn/xrn). TERM Terminal type for which output is to be prepared. TERMINFO Location of the terminfo directory (System V curses). TERMCAP The string describing the terminal in TERM, or the name of the termcap file (Berkeley curses). TRNINIT Initialization string for trn. USER The login name of the user. VISUAL Preferred screen editor; used by mail and news programs. WORKMANDB Location of data files for Workman CD player application. WWW_HOME ~/web/home.html Starting document for web browsers. XAPPLRESDIR [DEPRECATED] Replaced by XFILESEARCHPATH and XUSERFILESEARCHPATH. XFILESEARCHPATH Colon-separated list of directories to search for system X resource files. Can contain special tokens to facilitate i18n support. XUSERFILESEARCHPATH Colon-separated list of directories to search for user-specific X resource files. Can contain special tokens to facilitate i18n support. YOUSAID Format of attribution line in front of the quoted article (rn/trn/xrn). Appendix III: File Suffix Conventions Although UNIX allows users to store data and text in files of practically any name, certain conventions have evolved over the years. Here is a quick list of the suffixes most often encountered: .a Archive (ar) file. .awk Awk script. .bib Bibliographic data file. .c C source. .cc C++ source .dvi Device-independent text formatter output. .f Fortran (f77) source. .h Source code include file, usually C. .html HTML document .ksc Kermit script .l Lisp source; Lex source. .me Nroff/troff source using -me macros. .mm Nroff/troff source using -mm macros. .ms Nroff/troff source using -ms macros. .n Nroff source. .o Object (as output). .p Pascal source; Prolog source. .pl Perl program. .s Assembler (as) source. .sh Bourne (sh) shell script. .tar Archive created by tar. .tex TeX source. .txt A plain text file ,v RCS delta file. .w A Wart preprocessor file (similar to Lex). .y Yacc source. .Z Compressed file. .cf configuration file, as in sendmail.cf .z packed file .gz gzipped file .zip zipped file .C C++ source, or compacted file (obsolete) Appendix IV: File Name Conventions Although UNIX allows users to store data and text in files of practically any name, certain conventions have evolved over the years. Here is a quick list of the filenames most often encountered, and what they're used by: a.out Default name of executable files produced by cc, f77, pc, ld, and other compilers and loaders. calendar Location of user's schedule; used by calendar. Configure A shell script found in the top-level directory of software distributions. Usually refers to a Larry Wall-style interactive configure, whose first appearance (I think) was in "rn". configure A shell script found in the top-level directory of software distributions. Usually refers to a GNU-style non-interactive configure, found in things like "gcc". core *.core core.* Created by Unix when a program attempts an illegal operation; useful with adb, dbx, gcore and pxp. (More recent Unixes tend toward the latter two forms.) dead.article Used by Pnews and postnews for interrupted articles. dead.letter Used by Mail and mail for interrupted letters. gmon.out Profiling information; used by gprof. Imakefile A meta-makefile which is used to create Makefiles via tools such as xmkmf. lex.yy.c Output file from lex. Makefile, makefile Standard name for make command file. See also cc. mbox Used by Mail and mail as default mailbox. mon.out Profiling information; see prof. nohup.out Output from background commands after logout; see nohup, sh, and csh. strings Quoted strings file from xstr. tags Function references in C source; created by ctags and used by vi, ex, edit, and view. typescript Default name for script output. xs.c C source created by xstr. y.output, y.tab.h, y.tab.c Various yacc output files. Administrivia: I receive an average of hundreds of mail messages per day. If you want to make sure that your update/correction/reply to this article comes to my attention when I'm working on the next version, please send your message as a reply to this article, i.e. make absolutely certain that you preserve the "Subject:" line. If you don't do this, your reply may sit in one of my numerous mail queues for months or even years. Please don't send an update more than once -- doing so only adds to the queue that I have to process when doing updates. If you want to make certain that I've received something, then make a note of the information on the "Version:" line above. If it has changed when you next see this article, and your information isn't included, then I've missed it. Otherwise, it's safe to presume I've got it and it's queued for inclusion. The FAQ may be reproduced and propagated via http, ftp, gopher or other common Internet protocols by anyone provided that (1) it is reproduced in its entirety (2) no fee is charged for access to it and (3) it's kept up-to-date. This latter is probably best accomplished by mirroring one of the FAQ archives -- that way you'll get a new copy everytime I update it, which is approximately monthly. (If you do put it up on the web, I'd like to know the URL, but that's not a requirement. It just would be nice.) Reproduction of this FAQ on paper, CDROM or other media which are sold is permissible only with the express written consent of its author. If you are reading a copy of this document which appears to be out-of-date, there are a variety of methods that you can use to retrieve the most current method. If you are familiar with access to the FAQ archives via mail, ftp, and www, then you already know how. If not, then send email to [email protected] with the command "send usenet/news.answers/news-answers/introduction" in the message, and a complete guide to FAQ retrieval will be mailed to you. Copyright Rich Kulawiec, 1997, 1998, 1999.
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