openbsd 4.5 - changing .profile

noir911 · 04-01-2009, 07:20 PM

every time I make changes to .profile, i need to logout and log back in to get the changes to take effect. is there any way to avoid this?

thanks.

taylor_venable · 04-01-2009, 08:25 PM

Usually you can integrate changes into your current shell by doing `source .profile` but some things may only take effect on shell startup. In that case perhaps you could try `exec /path/to/shell`? Not sure.

indienick · 04-01-2009, 08:32 PM

Unfortunately, "source .profile" only works for Bourne Shell and Bourne-Again Shell, not KornShell...assuming the user account you are SSH-ing to has KornShell (ksh) set as their default shell.

rocket357 · 04-01-2009, 09:15 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by noir911

every time I make changes to .profile, i need to logout and log back in to get the changes to take effect. is there any way to avoid this?

thanks.

Would

su - <your_user_name>

work?

noir911 · 04-01-2009, 11:00 PM

Here is what I found: the source command is not present in openbsd 4.5-current base installation. so that definitely doesn't work. typing exec `which ksh` also didn't work. su - <username> does work but, it spawns a new shell (bad thing) and also if I have to type su - <username>, I would rather ^d and ssh back again (less typing, I guess).

Anyone else know any other trick?

O.S is OpenBSD 4.5-current with base installation with ksh & I'm connected via ssh.

Thanks.

rgouveia · 04-02-2009, 04:38 AM

From the OpenBSD FAQ:

Quote:

With ksh(1), this is more noticeable because there is only one startup script, .profile. This file is ignored unless the shell is a login shell.)

Check the faq8.html#ksh for more.

ArfaSmif · 04-02-2009, 06:07 AM

Have you tried ". .profile" in a shell? I haven't used ksh for a while now, but I think this should work.