Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!aplcen!samsung!gem.mps.ohio-state.edu!mips!smsc.sony.com!dce
From: dce@smsc.sony.com (David Elliott)
Newsgroups: comp.unix.questions
Subject: Re: Pass environment through rlogin (SMOP vs. SMOC)
Message-ID: <1989Nov21.153011.13283@smsc.sony.com>
Date: 21 Nov 89 15:30:11 GMT
References: <696@cs.wmich.edu> <1989Nov21.040936.10463@athena.mit.edu>
Reply-To: dce@icky.Sony.COM (David Elliott)
Organization: Sony Microsystems Corp.
Lines: 36

In article <1989Nov21.040936.10463@athena.mit.edu> jik@athena.mit.edu (Jonathan I. Kamens) writes:
>  People have been talking about writing an rlogin that transfers
>arbitrary environment variables over the connection for a long time
>now.  I wonder when it'll happen :-)

SMOP = Small Matter Of Programming
SMOC = Small Matter Of Commitment

At a previous job, I modified rlogin and login to pass all kinds of
data in both directions (all we used it for was to pass DISPLAY, and it
never got further than a couple of machines).  My modifications were
such that both the modified rlogin and the modified login were
completely compatible with unmodified versions.

I posted a description of my changes to comp.unix.wizards and sent
the description to the folks at Berkeley, but I never heard from a
single soul.

The basic problem is that the change involves login, since login
destroys its environment at startup time.

To get such a change out into the world would require the work of
some influential group of people, and I'm not a member of any such
group.  For example, if Sun or AT&T put such a change into SVR4,
it would be used.  If Berkeley made these changes an "official"
patch to 4.3BSD, as they did with setenv() and ADO's table-driven
ctime stuff, it would be used.  In fact, if MIT made this a standard
part of the X release, it might well get used.

In other words, it's a SMOP that requires a SMOC.

-- 
David Elliott
dce@smsc.sony.com | ...!{uunet,mips}!sonyusa!dce
(408)944-4073
"It's bigger than a breadbox, and smaller than the planet Jupiter."