Hi,

I am trying to modify the environment variables permanently.

From what I can gather from some research (it's been tough finding some definitive How-To's), modifying the .bash_profile will set the variables only for that user, whereas modifying the /etc/profile will set that change globally--is this correct?

If so, how do I formulate the syntax? I am trying to set the jdk.../bin path permanently.

Thanks.

The /etc/bashrc is used for

# System wide functions and aliases

and the /etc/profile is used for

# System wide environment and startup programs, for login setup

So if you want all users to have jdk in there path then you could add this line to your /etc/profile:

export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/jdk

Thanks Carshed

Will give it a try.

Do or do not. There is no try.

Found this solution after some more research:

To set the the path globally:

-goto the /etc/profile.d
-create a new file called java.sh
-in the java.sh, set the following:

#!/bin/bash
export JAVA_HOME=/usr/java/jdk1.3.1_07
export PATH=$PATH:$JAVA_HOME/bin
export CLASSPATH=.

This worked. Since I had a hard time trying to figure out where to set that in my /etc/profile to make it work properly. This is my /etc/profile:

# /etc/profile

# System wide environment and startup programs, for login setup
# Functions and aliases go in /etc/bashrc

pathmunge () {
if ! echo $PATH | /bin/egrep -q "(^|$1($|" ; then
if [ "$2" = "after" ] ; then
PATH=$PATH:$1
else
PATH=$1:$PATH
fi
fi
}

# Path manipulation
if [ `id -u` = 0 ]; then
pathmunge /sbin
pathmunge /usr/sbin
pathmunge /usr/local/sbin
fi

pathmunge /usr/X11R6/bin after

unset pathmunge

# No core files by default
ulimit -S -c 0 > /dev/null 2>&1

USER="`id -un`"
LOGNAME=$USER
MAIL="/var/spool/mail/$USER"

HOSTNAME=`/bin/hostname`
HISTSIZE=1000

if [ -z "$INPUTRC" -a ! -f "$HOME/.inputrc" ]; then
INPUTRC=/etc/inputrc
fi


export PATH USER LOGNAME MAIL HOSTNAME HISTSIZE INPUTRC

for i in /etc/profile.d/*.sh ; do
if [ -r "$i" ]; then
. $i
fi
done

unset i

Oh okay. Well for future use you can just add those lines to the end of the /etc/profile file.

# /etc/profile

# System wide environment and startup programs, for login setup
# Functions and aliases go in /etc/bashrc

pathmunge () {
if ! echo $PATH | /bin/egrep -q "(^|$1($|" ; then
if [ "$2" = "after" ] ; then
PATH=$PATH:$1
else
PATH=$1:$PATH
fi
fi
}

# Path manipulation
if [ `id -u` = 0 ]; then
pathmunge /sbin
pathmunge /usr/sbin
pathmunge /usr/local/sbin
fi

pathmunge /usr/X11R6/bin after

unset pathmunge

# No core files by default
ulimit -S -c 0 > /dev/null 2>&1

USER="`id -un`"
LOGNAME=$USER
MAIL="/var/spool/mail/$USER"

HOSTNAME=`/bin/hostname`
HISTSIZE=1000

if [ -z "$INPUTRC" -a ! -f "$HOME/.inputrc" ]; then
INPUTRC=/etc/inputrc
fi


export PATH USER LOGNAME MAIL HOSTNAME HISTSIZE INPUTRC

for i in /etc/profile.d/*.sh ; do
if [ -r "$i" ]; then
. $i
fi
done

unset i

export PATH=$PATH:/path/to/jdk