profile problems...

[Jonathan Caplette]

Hi guys!!!

I've a big little problem... This problem, only one of my user have it... When this user logon to the system, his profile don't seem to be loaded at all, cause he have not access to all of the application here (seems the PATH and apps environement variables are not set well)... When I login as root and I do a "su - user" I can run all his apps with out a problem... This is very weird cause when I switch-user, I use the same profile has him...

Does somebody have seen something like this!! Please help!!!

Jonathan

[Emiel van Grinsven]

Hi,

do pwck (-s for trusted system) /etc/passwd
maybe you'll find some fault in the passwd file.
Check uid's and grp id's for this user and all the files in his home dir. also permissions on this dir.

Good luck, E

[Jeff Schussele]

What happens if you have the user re-source the .profile?

Have him do the following:

. $HOME/.profile

Then see if he still has problems. He may be changing shells or doing something else he's unaware of.

HTH,
Jeff

[Bill Hassell]

.profile is executed if the user is running a POSIX shell (like ksh or /usr/bin/sh or even bash). If the user is running csh then the equivalent .profile features need to be edited into .cshrc (or have the user change to a more standard shell like the POSIX shell for application access).

Now if you are talking about workstations, the story is very different. The usual terminal window on 10.20 and 11.xx is CDE+dtterm and the defaults are to *NOT* run /etc/profile and .profile at all. While you can edit .dtprofile to turn on .profile, that still misses /etec/profile and both are needed for 'normal' Unix style support.

To fix this, have each user do this:

echo *loginShell: true" >> $HOME/.Xdefaults

Now, every terminal window (dtterm, xterm, hpterm) will truly login and run /etc/profile and then .profile).

[Craig Rants]

Bill's answer utilizing the .Xdefaults file will solve your problem.

GL,
C

[Jeff Schussele]

Bill,

Is that syntax correct on the echo command?
Should that be "loginShell: true" ?

Jeff

[Jonathan Caplette]

OK I'll try this, but Bill, like Jeff ask, is that echo "loginshell..." or echo "*loginshell..."

thanks...

[Alex Glennie]

it was a typo .... just vi .Xdefaults and add the resource !

NB logout of CDE or use xrdb -merge for the changes to take effect.

[Wodisch]

Hello,

care for both, the asterisk AND the uppercase!
The "loginShell: true" forces the terminal emulator programs to start the shell as a login shell (that way executing "/etc/profile" and "$HOME/.profile) and the asterisk means "don't care for the widget hierarchy inside the program"...

In your "$HOME/.Xdefaults" you should have:
*loginShell: true

or, using multiple lines:

xterm*loginShell: true
hpterm*loginShell: true
dtterm*loginShell: true

And the first few characters of the codefilenames could even be in uppercase, to use so-called "class-names" (read the man pages of xterm/hpterm/dtterm for this).

BEWARE: "loginshell" will never work, only "loginShell" does!

Just my $0.02,
Wodisch

[Jonathan Caplette]

And if I don't have the .Xdefault file, should I have one??? What I mean is do I need anything else in that file (Xdefault)???