Re: "Logon Scripts" (but NOT for Windows NT!)

[Glenn Valenta <glenn coloradostudios com>]

This has already been done. Look at /etc/rc.d where services are started from.

"/etc/rc.d/rc.local" is a script that runs on each boot

look in "$HOME/.bashrc" (Or whatever shell) for scripts to run as each user
upon login.


Jeff Maki wrote:
> 
> Hi everybody! I hope this isn't off topic - but I was thinking (that's
> dangerous!) about starting a new project - and I wanted to be sure it
> wouldn't be a duplicate effort or something people find useless (if so,
> I won't waste my time)....
> 
> Let me start off with the problem I see and aim to solve: I'm a system
> administrator for ~20 Linux boxes, all running GNOME (of course!). While
> I was sitting in traffic one day, I thought about how nice Windows logon
> scripts were (I used to maintain 70 Windows NT boxes) - for things as
> simple as time syncronization, maintaining a uniform desktop look, and
> mapping network drives - and also thinking how useless they were, as
> they can't be run as the Administrator (and thus can't change some
> properties of the system [without special services to run scripts as
> Administrator])
> 
> Then I thought, what if GNOME had the same type of system? So,
> basically, I am soliciting ideas/comments on a project I might start to
> develop a logon-script-like system for GNOME. I guess the script would
> run before GNOME starts (so it can change GNOME setup without GNOME
> knowing) and could be signed or something using PGP - if signed, part of
> it would run as 'root', and part as the user. Or the entire thing could
> just run as the user. I was thinking that instead of using some
> elaborate RPC setup to get the script itself, I could just download the
> script from either 1) FTP or 2) connect to a TCP port and copy the
> resultant data to a file. The client could keep MD5 hashes of the
> scripts in its cache, and thus perform some sort of caching of these
> scripts. I could also make the client, when connecting to the server,
> tell the server the user, hostname, etc. so the server could customize
> the script it gives the client! Thus, each user could get their own
> script at the administrator's choice. The script itself could do things
> such as mount/unmount NFS volumes, sync the time, change gconfd values,
> etc, etc. Instead of writing an entirely new language, I'd just use
> bash's syntax (and use bash itself to process it, I guess). NIS can do
> some of these things, but things like updating the Message of the Day,
> and changing GNOME config NIS can't do.... what do you guys think? Good
> idea? Bad idea? Already been done? It might be another feature that will
> make GNOME more attractive for "enterprise" rollout. (Especially if Sun
> is going to start supporting it....)
> 
> -Jeff.
>