GNU shell utilities 1.12
Release Notes

Note:

Some of the links in this file point to online documents which require additional installation.

Table of Contents

  • What are the GNU shell utilities (shutils) ?
  • Support Policy
  • Installation Information
  • Silicon Graphics Legal Notice
  • Author's Notice(s)
  • Few GNU software Web pages:
  • GNU Software Online Documentation
  • GNU info tree at Ohio State University
  • Index of GNU resources at Yahoo

    • What are the GNU shell utils ?

    shutils is the GNU collection of various small shell utilities usually called from within shell scripts. They are mostly compliant with POSIX.2, where applicable.

    The package includes the following utilities:

    basename date dirname echo env expr hostname id logname nice pathchk printenv printf pwd sleep stty su tee test tty uname version who whoami yes

    The main advantage of using the GNU version of these standard UNIX utilities is that they are available universally, on virtually any UNIX platform so your shell scripts that rely on the intricacies of all these small utilities become more portable. Also, most of these programs have significant advantages over their traditional Unix counterparts, such as greater speed, additional options, and fewer arbitrary limits

    See the man page of each of the above utilities for further details.

    Author's Notice(s):

    GNU packages are distributed under the FSF (Free Software Foundation) "Copyleft" which includes the GPL (GNU public license) and the Library GPL.

    The GNU shutils were written and enhanced over the years by scores of people on the net. Suggestions and bug reports for these utilities can be mailed to:
    bug-gnu-utils@prep.ai.mit.edu.

    Builder Notice(s):

    Built and packaged for SGI by Ariel Faigon

    This is free software.
    Emails for support silently ignored.
    Patches and constructive suggestions for improvement are welcome.

    Installation Information

    GNU shutils subsystems

    fw_GNUshutils.sw.*
    Execution only environment. The shell utilities executables.
    fw_GNUshutils.man.*
    Man pages, release notes, & texinfo documentation.
    fw_GNUshutils.src.*
    Full source distribution.

    Installation Method

    All of the subsystems for this product can be installed using IRIX. You do not need to use the miniroot. Refer to the Software Installation Administrator's Guide for complete installation instructions.

    Compatibility

    This software is compatible with IRIX 5.3 and IRIX 6.x.

    Note: the su executable was intentionally renamed to gsu. It is disturbingly incompatible with the SGI version. for example, it doesn't respect localhost in /.rhosts, and it refuses to su under certain conditions when it cannot initgroups. Likewise, hostname has been renamed to ghostname because the SGI version has an incompatible and often used -s option (to trim the domain).

    If you want the GNU su and hostname, feel free to rename them back as well as their man pages.