LS and TAR Commands missing Mandrake Linux 10 with kernel 2.6.3-7
 

Until just a couple of days ago ls and tar were working fine. Just today though I am unable to untar anything, since it says "utility tar not in your PATH". Can anyone please tell me the location of tar? I did a search and turned up nothing. I also tried to install tar again from GNU.
Ls works if I am root, but not as me. I thought theres something wrong with my .bashrc, so I copied root's .bashrc onto my folder. Still nothing. I feel im missing something obvious..

Check your PATH ("env | grep PATH") to find out where you're looking for binaries, and check that the location ("/bin") of the ls command ("whereis ls") is there.

Now not even root can use ls...I have no idea whats goin on...
Thanks..I tried it but guess what...grep doesnt work.
I can see all the binaries are there in /bin but i cant access specific ones,i can access gunzip but not tar

Okay, try the above commands, except specify actual path to commands, so something like:
$ /usr/bin/whereis ls
$ env | /bin/grep PATH
and so on.

great! thanks it works!
its alive!