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Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
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20 years ago

Problem with /bin/sh profile

Another problem that has been puzzling me lately. I'm running the /bin/sh shell and I can't seem to pick up changes in the /etc/profile file. For referrence, here's the file I'm usi...
Altera_Forum's avatar
Altera_Forum
Icon for Honored Contributor rankHonored Contributor
20 years ago

Thanks, although I might have figured it out.

It turns out I'm starting /bin/sh from the login program and not from inittab. So I had to change the login program to pass a '-' character otherwise /bin/sh won't read from /etc/profile.

execl("/bin/sh", "/bin/sh", 0);

Became

execl("/bin/sh", "-/bin/sh", 0);

Now I'm picking up settings in /etc/profile, but it doesn't appear that /bin/sh can handle variables. I've tried $PWD and \w to get a path into the prompt, but neither have worked.

Oh well.