8.8 A Directory for Commands You Shouldn't Run

How can you keep yourself from running some of the commands in a directory in your search path (6.4 , 6.5 ) ? For example, I use several different computers. I read and store my electronic mail (1.33 ) on just one computer - on that host, I want to use all the email commands. On the other computers, I want to be able to use mail-sending commands - but I don't want the mail-reading commands to work on my account there.

You might work on a project with shared filesystems where some commands will only work on certain computers. How can you stop the commands from being run accidentally on computers where they shouldn't be? There's a beginner on the system who shouldn't be running dangerous commands. How can you stop him from using just those commands?

You could make aliases (10.2 ) for those commands that just echo a message to the terminal. But having tens or hundreds of aliases like that can be a real headache.

Here's how I solved my problem. On all of my computers, the commands for the email system I use (called MH) are stored in the directory /usr/local/mh . I make a directory named no_run. hostname that has short shell scripts. The scripts have the same names as the the commands in /usr/local/mh that I don't want to run. On the computers where I don't want to run those commands, I put the no_run. hostname directory before the /usr/local/mh directory in my path:

switch
 

switch (`uname -n`)
case cruncher:
        set path=( ... ~/no_run.cruncher /usr/local/mh ... )
      ...

(A per-host setup file (2.13 ) can help, too.) When I try to use a command that I shouldn't, the shell will find the shell script in the no_run directory before the real command in the mh directory. The shell script rings the bell, prints a message with its own name and the name of the computer to use, then quits:

% inc


beep...
 You can't run inc here.  Use sunspot.

To save disk space, the shell scripts in the no_run directory are all hard links (18.4 ) to each other:

% ls -li no_run.cruncher


   ...
270156 -rwxr-xr-x 31 jerry          82 Jun 12 09:10 inc
270156 -rwxr-xr-x 31 jerry          82 Jun 12 09:10 mark
270156 -rwxr-xr-x 31 jerry          82 Jun 12 09:10 msgchk
   ...a total of 31 links...

The script uses the command basename  $0 (45.18 ) to include its (current) command name with the warning message:

1
 

#! /bin/sh
echo "\007You can't run `basename $0` here.  Use sunspot." 1>&2
exit 1

The \007 rings the bell on my version of echo ; your version might need a \a or a real CTRL-g character (45.35 ) instead. Article 16.15 shows a similar script.