how to set global environment variables?

demia · 04-25-2009, 06:37 PM

Hi,

I am setting PATH=$PATH:/demia on /etc/profile

it is supposed to set it globally but cronjobs are unaware of those newly set variables. Only root (without su) is aware of it.

i would like to set this once from a script at boot time and i want every user, every su command, every cronjob to access it without further ado.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

Robhogg · 04-25-2009, 06:55 PM

Does your system have an /etc/environment file? Have you tried setting it in there?

demia · 04-26-2009, 12:00 AM

I just set them there, but nothing happened.
$ env
doesnot show any variable that resides in the file you mentioned.

Thanks,

snippet from /etc/environment
-----------------------------
export PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/home/ami_tools/bin";
export JAVA_HOME="/usr";
export EC2_HOME="/home/ami_tools";

demia · 04-26-2009, 12:00 AM

I did reboot after. To be sure.

demia · 04-28-2009, 09:10 PM

I found out that environment file is not shell so for others, quick note:
format is below: it works this way.

PATH=/asdfasd
GO=/asdf

suhas! · 04-29-2009, 10:33 AM

crontab has its own PATH settings. You have to edit the PATH setting there in /etc/crontab file

______________
$ cat /etc/crontab
SHELL=/bin/bash
PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin
MAILTO=root
HOME=/

# run-parts
01 * * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.hourly
02 4 * * * root run-parts /etc/cron.daily
22 4 * * 0 root run-parts /etc/cron.weekly
42 4 1 * * root run-parts /etc/cron.monthly
_______________

or if you are doing crontab -e, then you can manually add "PATH=<your paths>" at the top.

Regards.

trey85stang · 04-29-2009, 11:29 AM

/etc/profile.local in Suse. I generally call my scripts in cron with, su -c which will load the appropriate localized user environment variables.