I've always modified the .profile for my installations so that when I'm using a user id in the terminal I have some aliases setup and set -o vi for the command buffer. I'd like to set that up for the current user and root on a FC6 box. I don't know if its a different shell and should be setup in a different file, but everything I try doesn't work.

I would also like to modify a template profile, so that when I create a new user it has this information attached to it also.

As you may have guessed what file you use to set up a user profile has a direct correlation to the shell you are using. The default shell in Fedora is bash. Type echo $SHELL to see what shell you are using. The man page for bash has a section on Invocation that describes how it starts up. When starting up it looks for ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, and ~/.profile. It will execute the first one it finds. Read the man page for a better description of this.

In Fedora they typically use .bash_profile to set up environment variables. They use .bashrc to set up aliases and functions. The default .bash_profile has a line that sources .bashrc to pull in the aliases and functions.

Bill

Didn't even have to go to the link you provided. The .bash_profile was what I was looking for.. Thanks many times over.