[SOLVED] Automate sourcing .bashrc when su

noir911 · 10-16-2010, 07:34 PM

I need to source the my /home/me/.bashrc file every time I "su -" to root. Is there any way to automate this? I cannot edit any thing in the root's environment as it is shared by people.

Thanks.

ndarkduck · 10-16-2010, 08:18 PM

uhm... usually /root/.bashrc has the answer for you, you may also look if you are using /root/.profile file, anyways. On the file that your shell is using, you may add

Code:

. /file/to/include.sh

Cheers

noir911 · 10-16-2010, 08:55 PM

What will it do if I include this: ". /file/to/include.sh" to my /home/me/.bashrc? And what's the content of the include.sh file?

Thanks.

mesiol · 10-17-2010, 12:09 AM

Hi,

it will do nothing. This was an example how to source a file. For your question change

Code:

/file/to/include.sh

to

Code:

.bashrc

in your case.

But .bashrc should be read automatically during logon.
From the bash manpage

Code:

When an interactive shell that is not a login shell is started, bash reads and executes commands from
~/.bashrc, if that file exists.

Possibly your .bashrc contains wrong or unusable code.

noir911 · 10-17-2010, 05:16 AM

Sorry, I don't think you understand the problem.

When you log in, you get your .bashrc (/home/you/.bashrc). When you
"su -" to root you get root's .bashrc (/root/.bashrc). To overwrite root's bashrc with yours for that session, you type: ". /home/you/.bashrc" Now, I have to type this every time I su to root. And I was wondering how can I avoid typing this and automate this process.

Thanks.

david1941 · 10-17-2010, 06:09 AM

If you do NOT use the "-", you do NOT get a login shell and your shell remains as it was, ie, the previous .bashrc of your shell remains. "-" is equivalent to "-l" see man su. Maybe that will work for you.

unSpawn · 10-17-2010, 07:28 AM

Given an interactive Bash login shell ('man bash': invocation) just add

Code:

RSRC="/home/you/.bashrc" [ -f "${RSRC}" ] && source "${RSRC}"

to the end of /root/bash_profile. Note it's not behaviour you would want to see on publicly accessible multiuser machines, just like the kernel doesn't read the firewall configuration but gets it pushed through the iptables binary, root should not read files owned by unprivileged users.

noir911 · 10-18-2010, 04:51 AM

Thank you all for your reply. "su -m" was the option I was looking for.