Default values of PATH variable

Question

After searching all over the internet, I came know where to alter the values of PATH variable in case of interactive/non-interactive - login/non-login shell combinations.

Found from another post

https://shreevatsa.wordpress.com/2008/03/30/zshbash-startup-files-loading-order-bashrc-zshrc-etc/

I have "/bin/sh" as default login shell and only /etc/profile file is being used to export all needed environment variables in my system. And in case of non-interactive login shell, /etc/profile is not being referred too, even though above link says it would. But still when I execute,

ssh -4 -q -o StrictHostKeyChecking=no root@xxxx "env"
Password:
SHELL=/bin/sh
...
**PATH=/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin**
...

I could see some default values for PATH variable. I would like to know where exactly these default values of PATH are being set.

Jens · Accepted Answer · 2015-06-24 13:38:14Z

1

You should not care at all where PATH is set. You should set PATH always in your shell startup file (.profile or .bashrc).

This way you do not rely on someone else's soon useless assumption what directories should be in your PATH. The only one who knows is YOU.

Start out with

PATH=$(getconf PATH)

and then add to your liking with

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin
PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/bin
PATH=$PATH:<...any other directory you need...>

PS: In your specific case, it looks like the PATH is inherited from the remote end's SSH daemon which eventually forks your shell. If a shell does not inherit a PATH from its parent, it will set a default value that you can query with env -i /bin/sh -c 'echo $PATH'.

answered Jun 24, 2015 at 13:38

Jens

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Mukuntha Rajaa Over a year ago

Thanks for the information. But again, I was curious to know where this default PATH was set. I am sure, its not from remote end`s SSH daemon. I did it from my development environment to production environment. Development environment has very huge PATH value, most of it are NA in production environment. I tried your second alternative also. Even that has something more than what I pasted :(

Toby Speight · Accepted Answer · 2015-06-24 16:13:32Z

0

It depends on your distribution. In Debian and its derivatives, the definition is found in /etc/environment and it is read into the current session by inclusion of pam_env.so in the appropriate /etc/pam.d/ files.

answered Jun 24, 2015 at 16:13

Toby Speight

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