[ILUG] PATH statements- sorted, thank you

[Declan Moriarty]

Was it Liam Bedford who wrote on Thursday 21 March 2002 17:33:
> On Thu, 21 Mar 2002 17:21:57 +0000
>
> Ronan Waide <waider at waider.ie> blurted in message 
15514.5813.769603.106053 at klortho.waider.ie:
> > On March 21, declan.moriarty at ntlworld.ie said:
> > > Thanks, Waider, but <grep -r PATH /etc/profile.d/*> shows zilch, and
> > > /etc/profile already has the $PATH bit without me putting it there.
> > >
> > > I can't set /usr/local/bin the path in X either. Perhaps I should stick
> > > to what I'm good at - hardware :-<
> >
> > Doing what I'm good at myself, which is reading manuals, I find that
> > PATH is set by login to a default value, before being modifed
> > elsewhere, such as in /etc/profile. Why is it such a big deal that
> > /etc/profile already has $PATH? Can't you just insert
> > PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH into it?
>
> Well, depending on what you want to do, surely doing the following will
> work with bash:
>
> add to ~/.bash_profile
>
> [ -f ~/.bashrc ] && source ~/.bashrc
>
> add to ~/.bashrc
>
> PATH=/usr/local/bin:${PATH}
> export PATH
>
> if what you mean is you have sendmail in /usr/local/bin, and you
> want that to be run from a startup script, you're better off changing the
> script to run /usr/local/bin/sendmail, that way you won't have any nasty
> surprises if you delete /usr/local/bin/sendmail, and forget to fix the
> scripts (the script will fail, but it won't run the wrong one).

Eh, no (Embarrassed pause). I've just recently installed pcb drafting and PIC 
programming software. (Pause for Laughter). This all landed in /usr/local, as 
you would expect it to. Mandrake, in their wisdom, had scripted out that 
particular location, since they wanted you to always get the rpm, it appears. 
Now ~/.bashrc had another PATH statement in it - the 97th. Change THAT one, 
and I have /usr/local/bin in the PATH. The fiddling I did previously might 
redefine it, of course. Whan I kill X I'll find out if it's visible in there.

Frustration has been building in me awhile, because the standard answers 
never work with Mandrake. If you want your pc it the way they set it up, 
fine. If you want to change things, look out.

I recently did an 85 Meg download from linuxfromscratch.org, got the book, 
and am going to build myself something, s l o w l y. Then mebbe I'll learn.
Things like this, and intractable problems buried in legacy scripting from 
Redhat which they played around with have driven me up the wall.

-- 
	Regards,


	Declan Moriarty




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