[SOLVED] CentOS does not have right path

Crimsonlegion · 03-29-2013, 01:15 PM

hello everyone,

as you can tell from my thread title, I am running CentOS as both server and a client machine for college, but I am restricted to using version 5.8 and it does not seem to have the right PATH for regular users to use commands like service, ifconfig,sendmail and commands of that sort. I have to resort to finding the full pathname for the command like /usr/sbin/sendmail in order to get it to work. However when i SU - , to login to root with full attributes, root has access to all those commands without the full path to it.

I am wondering if anyone knows to set the PATH to the proper PATH so I can use these commands and not have to login as root all the time?

spiky0011 · 03-29-2013, 01:20 PM

Hi

Post the output

Code:

echo $PATH

as user

camorri · 03-29-2013, 01:23 PM

This link -->http://www.troubleshooters.com/linux/prepostpath.htm explains the entire thing.

shivaa · 03-29-2013, 01:28 PM

Simply add following line in user's ~/.bashrc or ~/.profile file:

Code:

export PATH=$PATH:/usr/sbin

Then check the full path as:

Code:

echo $PATH

jpollard · 03-29-2013, 01:34 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crimsonlegion

hello everyone,

as you can tell from my thread title, I am running CentOS as both server and a client machine for college, but I am restricted to using version 5.8 and it does not seem to have the right PATH for regular users to use commands like service, ifconfig,sendmail and commands of that sort. I have to resort to finding the full pathname for the command like /usr/sbin/sendmail in order to get it to work. However when i SU - , to login to root with full attributes, root has access to all those commands without the full path to it.

I am wondering if anyone knows to set the PATH to the proper PATH so I can use these commands and not have to login as root all the time?

Regular users don't use "service,sendmail and commands of that sort". service in particular is only usable by root. Sendmail is normally used as a daemon, not by users. Users use MUAs, and sendmail is a MTA. Now special case use of sendmail is possible - but only if the user knows how to format mail messages for a MTA. And that is what utilities like mail, mailx are used for.

All you need to do is look in roots profile. Might also check the /etc/profile in case it sets a different one when it is the root user logging in.

A user can set any PATH value they want.

suicidaleggroll · 03-29-2013, 01:55 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Crimsonlegion

I am wondering if anyone knows to set the PATH to the proper PATH

It already has the "proper" PATH. The programs in /sbin and /usr/sbin are in those directories, and not in your PATH, because they are specifically NOT meant for regular users to run them. They are administrative programs that are meant to be run by root, not regular users.

http://www.linuxquestions.org/questi...vs-sbin-96063/

You can add them to your PATH so that you don't have to use the full path to run them, but most of the things you try to do with those programs will result in "permission denied" errors anyway unless you're running them as root.

spiky0011 · 03-29-2013, 02:23 PM

Hi

That means you would have to add yourself sudoers