can't run /sbin commands

Dave Webster dwebman at telus.net
Thu Sep 15 20:05:27 PDT 2005


Thanks Alex,
Looking at my .tcshrc file I saw the shell variable path set as:
set path =
(/sbin /bin /usr/sbin /usr/bin /usr/games /usr/local/sbin /usr/local/bin /usr/X11R6/bin
$HOME/bin)

but the environment variable PATH set as:
setenv PATH "{$PATH}:$FORREST_HOME/bin"

I removed the ""s and everything works fine.  Acroread7 installed fine.

I'm a happy camper.  Thanks for your help.
Dave

PS. Is there some good reference to explain shell variables and
environment variables, how they're set and their lifetime.
On Thu, 2005-09-15 at 10:10 +0100, Alex Zbyslaw wrote:
> Dave Webster wrote:
> 
> >When I first installed FreeBSD I was able to run "halt" and "reboot" as
> >su without the full /sbin/reboot command.  After adding a new path to
> >PATH, I've been unable to run these commands without specifying the full
> >path.  
> >[...]
> >Here is the output of echo $PATH:
> >/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:
> >/usr/X11R6/bin:/home/Dave/bin:/usr/home/Dave/apache-forrest-0.7/bin
> >
> >My question is with /sbin in the path why do I have to
> >specify /sbin/reboot, /sbin/kldstat etc.?  Could this be causing my make
> >install to fail?  How can /sbin be in the path and still require a full
> >path declaration for it's commands to work.
> >  
> >
> The short answer to your question is that if /sbin really were in your 
> path you would be able to run programs from it, therefore /sbin is *not* 
> in your path.  (Since you can run commands from /sbin with full path 
> names it can't be file permissions or deleted programs).  Either that or 
> something else on you path is somehow messing up your shell big-time, 
> but that seems less likely.
> 
> You say that the problems started after you changed you path (I assume 
> in your .profile or whatever).  So, quite simply, you must have made 
> some kind of mistake.  I would suggest going back to the file you edited 
> and starting again.  Comment out the PATH specification and add things 
> back one at a time.  Assuming a /bin/sh or derivative, you can re-load 
> your file with
>     . filename
> 
> (for csh derivatives, use "source filename").
> 
> After each change you make, source the changes and see if you can run 
> some innocuous program from /sbin such as kldstat.
> 
> --Alex
> 



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