HSI Settings

This section describes the environment variables that are used by HSI. In addition to these environment variables, the .hsirc file can be customized to set HSI variables such as the prompt string, default site to connect to, whether or not backups should automatically be created when storing or retrieving files that already exist, etc. System.

HSI Environment Variables:

ENVIRONMENT
Can be set to force HSI to run in batch mode. In batch mode, HSI does not prompt for yes/no responses for mput/mget commands, and will not prompt for passwords.

Example:

setenv ENVIRONMENT BATCH (csh), or
export ENVIRONMENT=BATCH (ksh or bash).

Note that both words must be uppercase.



HSI_LOGFILE
Sets the pathname that HSI uses to automatically create a logfile of the HSI session.

The logfile contains timestamped commands, responses, and error messages pertaining to the current session. In particular, it is important for recording activity for multi-HPSS sessions, as it is easy to lose track of which files were stored on which system(s).

The default logfile name, which is created in the user's home directory, is of the form:

          hsilog.xxxx
where xxxx is the current process ID.

If the file does not exist when HSI first starts up, it is created. If the file does exist, then messages are appended to the existing file. (Note: Users should periodically truncate this file, to avoid quota failures, or avoid filling up filesystems). Although there is currently no locking of the file to prevent multiple processes from trying to write to the file at the same time , steps are taken to minimize the possiblity of multiple HSI sessions corrupting each other's messages. In addition, each message contains the current process ID in square brackets, e.g.:

01 Oct 8 17:03:23[2303] cd Postscript

so that messages interleaved by multiple concurrent sessions can be easily separated by using a utility such as grep or awk.

The HSI_LOGFILE environment variable can be set to the reserved word "none" to disable the auto creation of a logfile. The log command can be used at any time during the session to create a logfile if so desired.

The pathname used for the logfile can contain metacharacters of the form:
          %X, where X is replaced during expansion as follows:

  • %H - home directory, as returned by the getpwuid system call
  • %N - local hostname, as returned by the gethostname system call
  • %P - process ID, as returned by the getpid system call
  • %U - login name as returned by the getpwuid system call

Examples:
HSI_LOGFILE Setting csh ksh / bash
Disable HSI logfile setenv HSI_LOGFILE none export HSI_LOGFILE=none
Create the file
hsilog.hostname
in the user's home directory. (Note: this is currently the default setting on the NPACI systems)		 setenv HSI_LOGFILE "%H/hsilog.%N" export HSI_LOGFILE="%H/hsilog.%N"



HPSS_SERVER_HOST
This variable controls the hostname or IP address to which HSI should connect during startup. It is normally set by the HPSS system administrator, and doesn't need to be set by the HSI users. The hostname (or IP address) is of the form:

          hostname[,service][/port]

where: ,service is the NDAPI service name, as specified in /etc/services, and

/port is the TCP port number to which HSI should connect. The service and port number are both optional. HSI has a compiled-in port to which it will try to connect if no port is specified.

Note that this environment variable can be overridden by the "-h" and "-p" command line option(s), as well as by settings in the global hsirc file, and/or settings in the .hsirc file in the user's home directory.



HPSS_PATH_ETC
This variable is the directory pathname that HSI prepends to configuration files that it looks for, for example, the network options file (hpss_netopt.conf).

This path is usually set by the HPSS system administrator, in a wrapper script that launches HSI, and normally should not be changed.



KRB_KINIT
This variable is used to contain the absolute pathname of the Kerberos kinit program, which HSI will launch if Kerberos authentication is being used, and there are no valid existing credentials. The pathname is normally set by the HPSS system administrator in an HSI wrapper script, and normally should not be changed.