root.wustl.edu /root> setenv MORE "-d -s" root.wustl.edu /root> more .login more: unknown option "--" usage: more [-dflpcsu] [+linenum | +/pattern] name1 name2 ... root.wustl.edu /root> setenv MORE -d root.wustl.edu /root> more .login more: unknown option "--" usage: more [-dflpcsu] [+linenum | +/pattern] name1 name2 ... root.wustl.edu /root> setenv MORE -this_is_broken root.wustl.edu /root> more .login more: unknown option "--" usage: more [-dflpcsu] [+linenum | +/pattern] name1 name2 ... No MORE or empty MORE (setenv MORE "") and more works fine. Shows on pinstripe/7.0 intel and 7.0 on alpha.
This works fine for me in util-linux-2.10m-12, which shipped with 7.0, as well as the latest util-linux from rawhide. I tried it with both tcsh (which seems to be your shell?) and bash. Are you still seeing this?
FYI, we have observed this problem in util-linux-2.10p-3 running under the VA Linux edition of RedHat 6.2. It appears to be fixed on our standard RedHat 7.1 systems, which are running util-linux-2.10s-12.