Re: help with file name space

[yhcrana <dd002b@uhura.cc.rochester.edu> writes:]

>although i ahve been watching this list for a few months, i only just got my
>hands on a 486 to play with. one of my first acts was to download vsta. it
>is running, sorta...

Congratulations! On bad days, I feel like all VSTa *does* is "run,
sorta...." :-)

>if i log in as guest, i can see the file system. but if i log in as myself,
>I see no file structure at all. the shell can't even find any executables.
>what did i do wrong?

Could you forward me your password file? If you've put "real" passwords
into it, please XXX them out.

>on a different note, I an confused by the "enviroment" field of the passwd
>file. what is that? (is an answer to that an answer to my previous
>question?)

It specifies your path down into the /env server for getting environment
variables. If your path was users/yhcrana, then when you did a:

    getenv("PRINTER");

the file /env/users/yhcrana/PRINTER would be accessed. If it didn't exist,
next would be /env/users/PRINTER, and finally /env/PRINTER. Thus, creating
a file /env/PRINTER sets a value global to the system. Creating
/env/users/PRINTER creates a value shared by all "users". And so forth.

So... the environment field says where a given account is "rooted" in the
environment hierarchy, which defines which values you might inherit from
various levels of the /env filesystem hierarchy.

>if this helps, every time i boot, init fails to find root and slepps for 5.
>i assume it does eventually find it (from looking at code and the fact that
>the guest account works).

This is probably OK. Some IDE drives take an unbelievable amount of time to
reset, long enough that init takes its first shot at mounting a root
filesystem before the drive is ready. If it gets it on the retry then
you're fine.

                                                        Andy
Received on Fri Aug 19 07:55:30 1994