I've heard a lot about environment variables, but I'm still not sure what config file should contain the setting for PATH.

/etc/rc.d/rc.local ?
/etc/profile ?
/etc/bashrc ?

Related question:

If you use " export " when setting an environment variable, that means that any application or shell on the system can access the variable, right? So why is it that I when I put

export SOMEVAR="somevalue";

in /etc/profile, then restart and then try

echo $SOMEVAR

it returns nothing?

Thanks in advance for any information on these pressing issues!

Ethan

/etc/profile

exporting a variable isn't meant to make it survive a reboot (I assume you mean that you rebooted the system when you say "restart"). The function of export is, for instance, if you opened two xterms side by side and set a variable in one, you couldn't echo it in the other until you'd exported it in the first. Hope that helps.

For setting the PATH, if you want the PATH to apply to all users, set it in /etc/profile. If you just want the PATH to apply to a single user, set it in the user's .bash_profile

If your "export" example is what you entered in /etc/profile, try not using the double quotes around the value and not adding a semi-colon to the end. I just entered the following line to my /etc/profile:

export TOOBY=jones

When I logged out and logged back in, the echo $TOOBY command returned jones.

If you were to do the export from the command line, then the value would disappear when you logged out or rebooted. Since you're putting it in /etc/profile, it should be permanent since /etc/profile is read whenever anyone logs in.

HTH

j.