Creating Alias for all users

wrmosca · 04-30-2018, 03:18 PM

I've searched through several posts about aliases for all users and keep getting "Put it in the /etc/skel/.bashrc".

Fine, I understand that, but when I type the command "alias" I get a list of what is in the .bashrc plus some others that I can't find anywhere such as:
alias vi='vim'
-or-
alias grep='grep --color=auto'

I love those and would like to add them to a new server, but I can't see where they were originally created on the old server.

Any help on where these little suckers exist?

coralfang · 04-30-2018, 03:35 PM

Probably in one of the scripts at /etc/profile.d/ or in /etc/profile itself.

For example on slackware, the file /etc/profile.d/coreutils-dircolors.sh is responsible for setting

Code:

alias ls='/bin/ls $LS_OPTIONS'

You could easily find which script is setting an alias by running something like:

Code:

$ grep alias /etc/profile{,.d/*}

Using /etc/skel/ can be useful, but only newly created accounts will copy over a template of .bashrc for example. If you placed aliases in /etc/profile these should be set for all users, regardless if the account already exists.

wrmosca · 04-30-2018, 04:07 PM

Perfect! Thanks, coralfang. That found a bunch of .csh and .sh files in /etc/profile with the aliases I was looking for.

ondoho · 05-01-2018, 09:50 AM

since we're talking about bash it seems, they could also be in /etc/bash.bashrc

GazL · 05-01-2018, 11:13 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by ondoho

since we're talking about bash it seems, they could also be in /etc/bash.bashrc

caveat: not every distro supports a system-wide bashrc out of the box, and even those that do can't agree on its name, i.e. /etc/bashrc vs /etc/bash.bashrc.

wrmosca · 05-01-2018, 12:09 PM

I do have a /etc/bashrc file. At the top the comments say:
# It's NOT a good idea to change this file unless you know what you
# are doing. It's much better to create a custom.sh shell script in
# /etc/profile.d/ to make custom changes to your environment, as this
# will prevent the need for merging in future updates.