Ok I must have messed something up but I'm getting a lot of 'command not found' errors going on. I think, somehow, a file got messed up which lists common paths (or whatever the term is)

Can someone tell me the file that should be edited &/or the basic lines that should be in it?

Example:

I can't run 'ifconfig', 'telinit', 'useradd', etc. They all give me 'command not found', but I'm sure I have those commands.

Are you logged in as root ? What OS are you using ?

I happened to have the very same problem when I started using linux. Actually the default path for root and user seem to be different. Try 'echo $PATH' when you login as root and when you login as normal user, and compare the two. You can't seem to use it even though you su to root user, you must login as root in the first place. So try 'export PATH=blablabla:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/sbin:/sbin'. The blablabla part is your normal path when you echo $PATH. The point here is to add those sbin things. You can also add the path to .bashrc file in your home directory. Other way, if you are too lazy like I am to bother about export or .bashrc I just /sbin/useradd; /sbin/telinit

Well with Red Hat 9 there's another root user PATH - to get the extended one which includes /sbin and /usr/sbin use

su -
root password

(ie su with a dash after it)

I get 'command not found' if I'm logged in as root or not. It seems, for some reason, that my /sur/sbin & /sbin directories are not being checked. I'll check that .bashrc file to see if those paths are in there but this has gotten annoying.

are you SURE you are doing

$ su -

and not

$ su

it makes a difference

Ok I see the difference that I get when typing su -. What does that change? That changes the root path?

Thanks.

For some reason in Red Hat 9 , just typing su root password gives you an ordinary users PATH whereas typing su - "dash" root password gives you a typical Root users PATH including directories such as /sbin - it might be su "dash" that you need - you can check out both versions with echo $PATH - the PATHS are quite different - one typical of an ordinary user and one typical of a proper Root user.