Use of /etc/PATH, /etc/profile, etc.

[Vibhor Kumar Agarwal]

Hi,

What's the use of /etc/PATH, /etc/profile, etc.

Because PATH variable and .profiles are different for each user.

[Pete Randall]

/etc/PATH and /etc/profile are used to set things that are common to each user. Settings unique to each user would go in there personal .profile file.


Pete

[Vibhor Kumar Agarwal]

So the entries in Path and profile will be inherited by the independent ones.

That means if we have
Path=/usr/bin

Then setting in independent .profiles like

Path=/usr/sbin
will contain both or do we have to do
Path=$Path;/usr/sbin

Do we have some other things like these.
Is there anything similar in Solaris?

[Joseph Loo]

hi,

/etc/profile contains global environment settings for the users. individual users' settings are defined in .profile at their home directory.

/etc/PATH is define in /etc/profile.

regards.

[Leif Halvarsson_2]

Hi,

Setting enviroment works the same on Solaris. Please note thet there also may be other files with enviroment settings depending on user shell and login method (e.g. .login and .dtprofile).

[saju_2]

Hi

I tried removing the .profile of my login and logged in again and tried to echo $PATH. The output is as expected. It shows only the path specified in /etc/PATH

During login
First /etc/PATH is taken
Second if u want any other gloabl path(common to all users)mention it in /etc/profile
Third if u want any specific path to that user mention it in that users $HOME/.profile

So execution is like

/etc/PATH
/etc/profile
/home//.profile

regards
CS

[Pete Randall]

What remains in the path depends on how it is being set in the .profile file. If it is set with what it already contains, it will be cumulative. In your example:

PATH=$PATH:/usr/sbin

This would yield /usr/bin:/usr/sbin

If, on the other hand, the previous contents are ignored, only what you specify will remain:

PATH=/usr/sbin

This would yield just /usr/sbin.


Pete

[Muthukumar_5 · Accepted solution]

/etc/profile is a file used to make user environment and settings. It sets Global environment for that login shell.

/etc/PATH contains directory locations where well-known binaries are seached while execution. which, whereis are working based on /etc/PATH file contents. It is like, find -type f -name "name"

Execution is like,

login (deamon)
|
/etc/profile
|
$HOME/.profile

/etc/PATH will be executed in /etc/profile itself.

hth.