Common HEP UNIX User Environment - Introduction


When a user interacts with a system, he has to deal with mainly 4 kinds of interfaces:

In UNIX systems, many shells, a graphical system namely X11, many applications which can be customized in several ways and eventually connectivity issues between systems make the life uneasy for a end user.

With the growing number of UNIX workstations from different vendors the task of setting up a common user environment becomes more and more difficult.

Facing this complex situation, the HEPiX committee (High Energy Physics UNIX committee), decided to address it in order to simplify the user environment up to a manageable level.

Thus, the HEPiX scripts project had been launched and this paper describes the motivations, and some components from the work which mainly involved the DESY UNIX Committee (DUX) and CERN itself. This project is meant to have a more homogeneous environment in analogy to the HEPVM efforts on the IBM mainframes.

So, one goal is to keep differences between platforms as small as possible and the challenge is to ensure that all combinations of platforms and software products represent a reliable and consistent user environment.

These scripts are setting up a Common Unix Environment at shell and graphical level (X11).

At shell level, they provide the default environment for users to login, work in interactive and batch mode for the most common shells and platforms.

At X11 level, they provide the default environment for users to login from an Xserver (X terminal, Workstation, PC, etc.) to a UNIX system with a properly set up "Xsession".

Thus, each UNIX user should be able to work on any platform in the HEP community without having to reset his environment files.

In order to reach this ambitious goal, DESY Hamburg and DESY Zeuthen started the initial work on the shell level in 1992. They produced the main engine and the main background ideas. Then a joint project between DESY Zeuthen and CERN had been done between February and end of March 1994. Since then


Arnaud Taddei, 27-Jun-1996