TN0088

Files which you may be able to remove from /usr/local

CD/OSS
Applications Support

Background:

Prior to ups/upd v4.x, the Fermi User Environment (FUE) included a suite of utilities and binaries which were copied into /usr/local. The required FUE utilities, with a brief description of each, were:

• systools: system administration utilities, located under /usr/local/systools; the utilities included the Fermi login scripts and ups initialization files, as well as the "cmd" function (which allows non-privileged users to do specific privileged things) and various "cmd utilities" (adduser, renice, etc.).
• funkern: programs called from the Fermi login scripts, copied into /usr/local/bin
• fulib: C-callable library of the funkern utilities
• futil: a random assortment of odds and ends that were considered to be Generally Useful Utilities, copied into /usr/local/bin

Since the autumn of 1999, FUE has been redesigned utilizing the new features of ups v4.x. The goals of the redesign were:

1. Remove "chicken and egg" installation problems.
   • CoreFUE is now defined to be ups/upd/perl. No other packages are needed. These are self-contained.
   • The ups/upd initialization files are now packaged with the ups product itself; as are any subsidiary products required by ups/upd (dropit, funame)

2. Allow ups/upd to be installed without 'root' privilege.
   • No assumptions about location of the UPS initialization files are made by "higher" packages
   • One must know where to find the appropriate "setups" script in order to initialize the FUE environment. For consistency and convenience, we strongly encourage on-site systems to create the "courtesy" links /usr/local/etc/setups.[c]sh, but this is not a technical requirement.

3. Remove hard-coded path requirements so that other systems can install products wherever they wish (and therefore remove requirements of 'root' privelege where not needed).
   • Higher-level utilities needed to be rewritten with the assumption of "portability".

4. Take advantage of the shell-independence of ups table files to avoid shell-specific coding errors. This implies that we move from a mentality of "source /usr/local/etc/somescript" to a mindset where we always use setup:

   old method	new method
   source /usr/local/etc/setups.csh # or . /usr/local/etc/setups.sh	source /path/to/setups.csh # or . /path/to/setups.sh
   source /usr/local/etc/setpath.csh # or . /usr/local/etc/setpath.sh	setup setpath
   source /usr/local/etc/fermi.login # or . /usr/local/etc/fermi.profile	setup login
   source /usr/local/etc/fermi.cshrc # or . /usr/local/etc/fermi.shrc	setup shrc
   /usr/local/bin/Info -new	setup Info; Info -new

5. Modularize the individual pieces for maintainability.
   • Take advantage of the "table-file-only" product capability, which allows things like "futil" to become a list of subsidiary products, each of which may be maintained individually. The redesign of upd has made it quite easy to install and maintain this type of product.

The redesign has been very successful, and is in use on all FUE-compliant systems installed since the autumn of 1999.

Upgrading an Older System

To clean up the vestiges of the old FUE, you must first upgrade to the new FUE -- ups/upd v4_0 or higher (we recommend v4_5 at this time (January 2000)), and systools v6_0 or higher (and all of its subsidiary products). You must also convert any existing accounts' login scripts to the new FUE syntax (replace calls to the Fermi files (previously in /usr/local/etc) with the appropriate ups initialization (setups.[c]sh) and "setup xxx"). See FUE Login Methology (tn0089) for details. For example:

typical old .login snippet: if ( -r /usr/local/etc/fermi.login ) then source /usr/local/etc/fermi.login endif	replaced by new .login snippet: if ( -f "/fnal/ups/etc/setups.csh" ) then source "/fnal/ups/etc/setups.csh" if ( { ups exist login } ) then setup login endif endif
typical old .cshrc snippet: if ( -r /usr/local/etc/fermi.cshrc ) then source /usr/local/etc/fermi.cshrc endif	replaced by new .cshrc snippet: if ( -f "/fnal/ups/etc/setups.csh" ) then source "/fnal/ups/etc/setups.csh" endif if ( { ups exist shrc } ) then setup shrc endif

systools v6_0 relies on a new product called template_home, which contains the templates for the login scripts which are given to new accounts via cmd adduser (one of the systools utilities). The template_home scripts use the new FUE syntax; therefore, all new accounts created via "cmd adduser" will have the new FUE syntax. However, existing accounts' login scripts will need to be converted to use the new FUE syntax. The template_home product includes documentation describing the required changes to login scripts.

Once you have converted existing login scripts you may begin to think about removing the old FUE files from /usr/local.

Files Which are No Longer Distributed on a FUE System

The following files are no longer distributed in /usr/local on a fully FUE compliant system using the latest software. You may consider removing them from your system, but you do so at your own risk.

Files Which are Still Distributed on a FUE System

The following files are still expected to be found in /usr/local on an on-site fully-compliant FUE system.

files still supported in /usr/local
file	parent product	technical details	notes
/usr/local/etc/setups.[c]sh	ups	Symbolic links to the system-specific $SETUPS_DIR/setups.[c]sh scripts.	These are referred to as the courtesy links. They are not required, but are strongly requested on all on-site nodes. They are for the convenience of the CD personnel who are called upon to assist on many different systems. The links are created once, and never need to be updated again.
/usr/local/bin/setup_and_run_perl (and /usr/local/bin/perl, /usr/local/bin/perl, /usr/local/bin/perlbug, /usr/local/bin/perldoc, /usr/local/bin/sperl, /usr/local/bin/suidperl)	perl	All links to the same file, setup_and_run_perl	The /usr/local/bin/perl is what allows people to use #!/usr/bin/env perl in their scripts (for portability) and be able to run these scripts in environments where "setup" is not necessarily an option (e.g., cgi scripts). "setup_and_run_perl" sets whatever environment is necessary for perl, as a "setup perl" would have done. These links are not required; but if they aren't present, then users must setup perl before it can be used.
/usr/local/bin/tcsh, /usr/local/bin/bash	shells		Login shells. Default systools configuration assumes that these files live in /usr/local/bin; if you move them, you will need to reconfigure systools.

In addition, there may be certain security tools or administration utilities which will create files in /usr/local. (They are not documented here, because this document is only covering the old systools/futil/funkern files, not all files that could have been found in /usr/local).