I followed the suggestions here for setting the PATH but it doesn't work. I created .bash_profile, .bash-profile and .bashrc and put the same lines in each in my efforts to set a path to OpenOffice so I wouldn't have to type /home/mooreted/OpenOffice.org1.1.1/program/ every time I wanted to create menus in blackbox. Here are the lines I added:

PATH=$PATH:/home/mooreted/OpenOffice.org1.1.1/program/
export PATH

But echo $PATH just shows the global path that Slack set up by itself and typing swriter at the cli does not work.

There must be a way to set the path.

Ted.

Did you parse the newly created files (or logged out and in)??

Untill you do, the new PATH variable will not be set automatically.

Hope this helps.

Yeah, I even tried rebooting. No matter, I put the path at the end of the PATH command in /etc/profile

Thanks for the help.

PATH=$PATH:/home/mooreted/OpenOffice.org1.1.1/program
export PATH

These 2 lines should be at/near the end of your /etc/profile (global). Even better is putting it in ~/.profile (local), just leave the other stuff the way it was.

Is your syntax correct? If you want you can post the part you added/edited.

Btw: You don't need the last / (after /program).

Thanks. I didn't know you could have more than one PATH command. That would be handy.

PATH=$PATH:/home/mooreted/OpenOffice.org1.1.1/program/
export PATH

That is copied and pasted from the ~.bash-profile I created.

I'm having the same problem with not being able to change my PATH. All im trying to do is add ' ./ ' to the PATH so that i don't have to type ./a.out all the time. I went to /etc/profile and included ' ./ ' in the PATH. I've restarted the terminal, rebooted my machine and no matter it won't add ' ./ ' to the PATH.

here is /etc/profile

PATH="./:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games"

if [ "$PS1" ]; then
if [ "$BASH" ]; then
PS1='\u@\h:\w\$ '
else
if [ "`id -u`" -eq 0 ]; then
PS1='# '
else
PS1='$ '
fi
fi
fi

export PATH

umask 022

am i doing something wrong or do i have to change something else to get it working? Thanks for your help.

try PATH="$PWD:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games"

see if it works

[edit]
but do no append this sort of things to a system config do this in ~/.bashrc instead
and this can also be done by simply :

export PATH="$PWD:$PATH"
in ~/.bashrc

I assume you did a typo error (~/.bash_profile). For properly configure system I used to have a ~/.bash_profile like this :

if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
source ~/.bashrc
fi

that's all, all the stuff is in ~/.bashrc

thanks, i edited .bashrc and it works just fine