[wplug] PATH housekeeping

[harrold at sage.che.pitt.edu]

Sometime in October Weber, Larry A assaulted keyboard and produced...

|I have been trying to clean up the default $PATH.  Currently there are
|duplicate directory searches that I would like to clean out.  I have
|searched /etc but cannot find a file(s) that set $PATH to the value echoed.
|Even if there are multiple files building it, the segments don't match up.
|I am using RH7.1 and find $PATH being set (absolutely or conditionally) in
|several places, particularly in /etc rc.sysinit, profile, and csh.login, and
|anacrontab.  Again, none of these, or any combination, are building the
|default $PATH.
|
|I have installed updated versions of some of the tools that were installed
|by the distro (gcc, and others).  I don't want to blow away the original yet
|so I installed them into /usr/local/.  I would like the new versions to be
|found first.  I have considered three ways, alias, ln, and changing the path
|search order.  Whatever I do, I don't want to have to redo every time I open
|a terminal or reboot.  And it would be nice if it where the same for all
|users.  Any suggestions as to the best way?
|

you could just reassign the path to what you want. in bash i dont recall
which is loaded last .bash_profile or .bashrc; in which ever is last you
could export the path you want (not inculding the current $PATH). this
would overwrite any predefined paths. after figuring out which of the above
files is loaded last (or if you're using something like tcsh-what ever rc
type file it uses), you could write a script to echo the path to all the users
conf files on your system. this would take care of current users. then make
the same changes in /etc/skel to cover future users.

this isnt the cleanest way of doing things, but if alot of stuff is being
loaded this is one way to overwrite everything.

-- 
john
-dirt it's what we die for.