[HADOOP-7610] /etc/profile.d does not exist on Debian

• Type: Bug
• Status: Closed
• Priority: Major
• Resolution: Fixed
• Affects Version/s: 0.20.204.0, 0.23.0
• Fix Version/s: 0.20.205.0, 0.23.0
• Component/s: scripts

Environment

Java 6, Debian

• Hadoop Flags: Reviewed
• Assignee: Eric Yang
• Reporter: Eric Yang
• Created: 03/Sep/11 02:05
• Updated: 19/Oct/11 00:26
• Resolved: 10/Sep/11 01:09

Description

As part of post installation script, there is a symlink created in /etc/profile.d/hadoop-env.sh to source /etc/hadoop/hadoop-env.sh. Therefore, users do not need to configure HADOOP_* environment. Unfortunately, /etc/profile.d only exists in Ubuntu. Section 9.9 of the Debian Policy states:

A program must not depend on environment variables to get reasonable defaults. (That's because these environment variables would have to be set in a system-wide configuration file like /etc/profile, which is not supported by all shells.)

If a program usually depends on environment variables for its configuration, the program should be changed to fall back to a reasonable default configuration if these environment variables are not present. If this cannot be done easily (e.g., if the source code of a non-free program is not available), the program must be replaced by a small "wrapper" shell script which sets the environment variables if they are not already defined, and calls the original program.

Here is an example of a wrapper script for this purpose:

     #!/bin/sh
     BAR=${BAR:-/var/lib/fubar}
     export BAR
     exec /usr/lib/foo/foo "$@"

Furthermore, as /etc/profile is a configuration file of the base-files package, other packages must not put any environment variables or other commands into that file.

Hence the default environment setup should skip for Debian.