Where does PATH at login come from?

Kim Christian Madsen kimcm at rimfaxe.diku.dk
Wed Nov 28 03:39:15 AEST 1990


thorinn at rimfaxe.diku.dk (Lars Henrik Mathiesen) writes:

>gwyn at smoke.brl.mil (Doug Gwyn) writes:
>>Typically there are three possible sources for the initial PATH:
>>	The shell itself will have some hard-wired default PATH.
>>	A system-wide configuration file (/etc/profile, for example)
>>	can reset the PATH, if the shell reads the configuration file.
>>	Each user can have his own configuration file in his home
>>	directory; names are usually .profile (sh) and .login (csh).

>Four and five: login and init. On our system (Mt. Xinu 4.3), login
>does create an initial environment with a PATH, while init doesn't.

Not to mention .cshrc (csh) or .tcshrc (tcsh) in a networking environment,
where .login (csh && tcsh) is not sourced when logging in remote. And 
/etc/cshrc the csh equivalent to the systemwide /etc/profile in the Bourne
Shell, supported by some csh's.

V7, System III, and BSD derived systems have a minimal PATH set by the
login program, while System V derived systems have no builtin PATH from
login, they get the PATH from the places mentioned by Doug above and the
ones given by me.

					Kim Chr. Madsen



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