[svlug] Environmental Variables

[Chris Waters]

Javilk wrote:

>      When a script file is invoked by cron, the PATHs are not established,
> and everything starts failing.  Yet a setenv or an env will not allow me
> to establish the proper PATH.

Anything designed to run under cron must be prepared to deal with the
minimal environment which cron, for security reasons, provides.  If a
shell script called by cron needs to have a different environment, the
script must modify the environment itself.  In some cases, this means
that you may have to make special scripts just for cron to call.  These
(like all scripts) should not be csh/tcsh scripts.  (So any use of
"setenv" should result in a "command not found" response!:-))

>      And while I am at it, is there any way to convince LYNX not to turn
> the screen to inverse video? [...]
> White backgrounds bother my eyes considerably after a short time.

Hmm, I have real trouble getting lynx to use a white background!  (Not
that I want to).  Lynx *doesn't* use reverse video!  However, if you
have colors enabled, it should use its predefined background color no
matter what the foreground color is.  I'm guessing that your copy of
lynx is predefined to use a white background color, and mine to use
black.  (Boo to SuSE if this is the case!)

Try playing with the "show color" option under lynx (press "o" to get to
options).  I don't see any way of changing the colors lynx uses (might
be a compile-time option), but you can disable them.  That's probably
what you were doing (semi-inadvertently) when you set TERM to vt100. 
Vt100 doesn't support colors.  But lynx will try to use colors anyway if
you have the color option set to "always", which you probably do. 
Change it to "never" and you won't have to monkey with TERM.

To change the colors (rather than just disabling them), you might need
to use the source (Luke).  Or you might want to try installing the
Debian package with "alien" or something, since it uses a black
*colored* background.
-- 
Chris Waters   xtifr at dsp.net | I have a truly elegant proof of the
or   cwaters at systems.DHL.COM | above, but it is too long to fit into
http://www.dsp.net/xtifr     | this .signature file.

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