hi,

i am using redhat 7.3 at this moment. my problem is, in the command line, when i set an alias it wont last long, when i reboot the machine, the alias that i had set before is not listed. whay is that happened?

If you set the alias from a command line it will go away when you close the shell. Its a temporary variable. If you want the alias always available you would edit thats users .bashrc file. Lets say you want the user john to have an alias for searching for rpms. You would add this line into /home/john/.bashrc

alias rpmfind='rpm -qa | grep '

If you want ALL users to have this alias then you would add that line to the /etc/bashrc file.

Or for Slackware users:

alias checkpkg='ls /var/log/packages/ | grep '

or for gentoo users

/etc/profile

woww.....

never thought that there will be good and fast reply on this thread. anyway, what to say... but thanx so much guys. you are helping me. especially to Crashed_Again!!. you gave good reply and the most detailed one.

hope i could get help from all of you again since there are still many question in my head.

why do you say you didn't expect a reply? it's a perfectly straightforward question, and, of course, linuxquestions rules.

this is my first time in this question board, and that one is my first question here. i did not meant that i did not expected any reply.... but i did not thought that it would be this fast.

Don' knock me off my pedistal Acid_Kewpie. I know it is a simple question for a guru like yourself.

We all started as beginner once a day.

well, since i knew how to set up an alias. i just thinking about having an alias like this
alias 1='CTRL+Alt+1'------> until ctrl+alt+6. but i dont think that the system could identify those 'crtl and alt'. what should i put for the 'crtl' and 'alt'. does anyone know?

That is a whole different beast wincrk and to tell you the truth I have no idea how you would do something like that. Aliases are based on commands. If you type:

CTRL+ALT+1

at a command you'll get a message saying:

bash: CTR+ALT+1: command not found

because that is not a command.

then i think i have no choice, but to forget about that. but it is still OK. alias are so signifant to me.

The files your looking for is in the /etc/ I am pretty sure.

I once was able to do this, I have to go back to the next LUG meeting and ask again. Once done I'll let you know.


Problem is, when you set it in the shell like this: "alias wmaker = 'WINDOWMANAGER = /usr/X11R6/bin/wmaker'" It will only work for that session. Once you reboot it is gone. In fact, alias is ALWAYS like that.

To solve it, you have to find the file (which I am looking for under Java Sun Os/Suse (which they seem to make it elusive)) that deals with aliases. Problem is its generally NOT the file called "aliases"!!! What fun!

Instead, you might be able to find it in the ".bashrc", ".bash_profile", but you'll have to do the snooping yourself. An easy..yeah right..way to find it would but to type "alias" and then look for a file that has similar contents to your "alias" command displayed.


it will pretty much be loaded in your startup scripts, and thus you always get the aliases you had last time (in that apparently elusive file).

If you find it PLEASE let me know....I forgot...and I have found it very useful for some shorthand techniques.

I hope this helps you get int he correct direction as these people seem to not completely understand what your asking.