Re: determine when user account created?

From: Dave Uhring (daveuhring_at_yahoo.com)
Date: 10/28/04 

Date: Wed, 27 Oct 2004 21:05:16 -0500

On Wed, 27 Oct 2004 21:07:49 -0400, Barry Margolin wrote:

> In article <pan.2004.10.28.00.52.33.589222@yahoo.com>,
> Dave Uhring <daveuhring@yahoo.com> wrote:

>> That symlink, if it were even created in the first place, would be quite
>> unlikely to be changed. Of course the user can change any file in his
>> home directory, but some are unlikely to be changed, ~/.dtprofile as an
>> example.
>
> I recall needing to customize that file occasionally.

Mine is still original.
------------------------------------------------
Several lines involving dtstart_sessionlogfile.

DTSOURCEPROFILE=true
------------------------------------------------

The rest of the file is commented and with that last line it appears that
~/.profile is where ones modifications ought to be made. However, if
one's login shell is csh or tcsh, how much good is that last line?

>> OTOH, how many hidden files in *your* home directory were added on the
>> date your user account was created and still retain the same date/time?
>
> When I was a heavy Unix user, I modified my dot-files pretty often, e.g.
> to add directories to my PATH, or change how I customized my prompt, etc.
>
> Maybe there are some that are almost never changed, but off the top of
> my head I can't think which ones they would be.

There is almost certainly at least one file there which has remained
unmodified. I copied my user home directory from another system to this
one and "ls -lat .??*" clearly shows that my account was created on
Dec 7, 2002.

>> ~/.bashrc is not sourced at login so apparently it is not for *every*
>> instance of shell invocation.
>
> OK, every subshell. Still, I don't think they should normally be linked
> together -- there's stuff you only need to do at login time, not in
> subshells. Often .bash_profile ends with "source .bashrc" to get that
> script executed in the login shell as well.

I find that maintaining one such file is enough work even it it costs a
few microseconds on each invocation of xterm|dtterm. YMMV.