where is the PATH built these days?

[foobar2devnull]

Hi all,

this is my first post on this forum so hi to all.

I've been using linux for a while now but I'm a new to systemd and I suspect the answer to my question will be systemd!

My $PATH puts "/usr/local/bin" before "/usr/bin". I'd lilke to change the order or just remove something from the default PATH but I can not figure out where the PATH is built.

I cannot find it in /etc/profile, /etc/bashrc, ... so I'm guessing it's in systemd.

How can I achieve this?

Any help is welcome!

[smr54]

You can change the order of your path in .bashrc (interactive) or .bash_profile (as you log in.)

You can change the order of your path in .bashrc (interactive) or .bash_profile (as you log in.)

Depending upon what you want to remove and for how many users, you can do it for a user in their .bash_profile or .bashrc file. There's also some pathmunge lines in /etc/profile. (If, for example, you want to remove sbin files from a normal user's path.) http://unix.stackexchange.com/questi...s-even-in-cron indicates that you can use /etc/environment.

[foobar2devnull]

Hi,

Thanks for your answer. I'll give your solution a go. My question in the end is "how is the base path created?".

Is it generated from an init script?

[TruboXL]

I think PATH is made by /etc/profile

[jpollard]

Depends on your distribution...

I think most are using /etc/profile.d to set the defaults for the various shells. Each file there sets a profile for a different application (usually a shell being used in different ways).

After that the /etc/profile.d there is the system wide "/etc/profile" file that modifies the results...

Then it depends on how the shell is being invoked. There is .bashrc that each user uses when starting the bash shell, .cshrc for csh (and others). Then there are other startups - for the bash shell ".bash_profile, .bash_login, and .profile (all in the users home directory). If it is not a login shell then some get skipped in favor of using .bashrc only...

Lots of places... Some depend on the GUI being used as the startup script for the GUI makes changes...

[lsatenstein]

Hi foobar2devnull

My path statement

/usr/lib64/ccache:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/home/leslie/.local/bin:/home/leslie/bin

Here is a question for you, « if you can please respond as to why you want to change the order of the path statement.
.
If you are creating local software versions, would you not want your versions to be retrieved from /usr/local....
before the one with the same name within /bin or /usr/bin , the system version.? »

With Fedora /bin and /usr/bin point to a common directory. As of Fedora 23, a decision was made to merge them into one /usr/bin partition and to use symbolic links for /usr/bin

Ditto for /sbin and /usr/sbin.

La vie Fedora n'est pas toujours bizzare, mais bien pensée.

[ocratato]

I was looking at my PATH and I am in agreement with the OP - it is not clear where the initial values are being set.

My PATH in a terminal is

/usr/lib64/qt-3.3/bin:/usr/lib64/ccache:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/sbin:/home/brenton/.local/bin:/home/brenton/bin

If I strip off the stuff added in my .bashrc I get

/usr/lib64/qt-3.3/bin:/usr/lib64/ccache:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/sbin

If I then strip off the stuff added from /etc/profile.d I get

/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/sbin

Prior to running the scripts in /etc/profile.d the /etc/profile script attempts to add /usr/local/sbin and /usr/sbin at the end if they are not already in the path. Since they are not the last two, I can conclude that the above core PATH was already set when /etc/profile was run.

This implies that either systemd or the login process has set the PATH.

[marko]

... Since they are not the last two, I can conclude that the above core PATH was already set when /etc/profile was run.
This implies that either systemd or the login process has set the PATH.

login does it:

This is from a middle section of the 'man login' page

The user and group ID will be set according to their values in the /etc/passwd file. There is one exception if the user ID is zero: in this case, only the
primary group ID of the account is set. This should allow the system administrator to login even in case of network problems. The value for $HOME, $USER,
$SHELL, $PATH, $LOGNAME, and $MAIL are set according to the appropriate fields in the password entry. $PATH defaults to /usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin for normal users, and to /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin for root, if not otherwise configured.

[foobar2devnull]

Sorry for my prolonged absence, we had a crisis to resolve.

@marko, well spotted, thanks! I'll check it out as soon as I've finished replying. Thanks!

@ocratato, thanks for the reverse engineering

@Isatenstein, I don't like having "/usr/local/bin" in front of /usr/bin, ... I am no security expert but if someone on the same box created a malicious program that he calls "ls", I will run it without even knowing it... I would not mind ~/bin though...

@jpollard, why complicate something that worked well and was easy? Same goes for network setup these days... I got a lot of info so I'll dig further. Thanks for your help.

@TurboXL, not that easy it seems...

Thank you all for your feedback.

[foobar2devnull]

My original path was:

/usr/lib64/qt-3.3/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin:...

What I want is:

/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:...

What I managed to get up to now was:

/usr/lib64/qt-3.3/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin

I managed to remove (temporarily, for test reasons) /usr/local/bin to see it it worked and it did.

To do this, i added a line at the end of /etc/login.defs:

ENV_PATH PATH=/bin:/usr/bin

How qt manages to jump the queue is the next one on the list...

@marko, thanks for pointing me in the right direction

[foobar2devnull]

Ok, problem solved

My initial PATH
/usr/lib64/qt-3.3/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin:/home/jdoe/.local/bin:/home/jdoe/bin

It can be split into three files

/etc/profile.d/qt.sh

if ! echo ${PATH} | /bin/grep -q $QTDIR/bin ; then
   PATH=$QTDIR/bin:${PATH}
fi

I reversed the order here.

/etc/login.defs

ENV_PATH PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin
ENV_SUPATH PATH=/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin

note that if you do not mention ENV_PATH in the file, the default (as per the man login page) is "/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin".
Note too that documentation seems to conflict on default paths between login and login.defs.

/etc/skel/.bash_profile

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/.local/bin:$HOME/bin

You might have move options in /etc/profile.d.
You might also have more options in ~/.bash_profile

My result:

/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/lib64/qt-3.3/bin:/home/jdoe/.local/bin:/home/jdoe/bin

Thank you all for your help.