Fixing my PATH variable

Question

When I type echo $PATH, I get the output:

/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/local/games:/usr/games

However, I modified my PATH variable using gksudo gedit /etc/environment; the file now reads PATH="/opt/texbin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games".

I am not sure why I am getting two different value of PATH. How can I fix it?

I am running Xfce on a Chromebook using Crouton.

Answer 1

Edit

• /etc/profile to affect all users.
• ~/.bash_profile to affect single users bash shell (so not this one, as it is for bash specific stuff).
• ~/.profile to affect single user, all shells.

Note: If you have both .profile and .bash_profile and you want both to be read by bash, then you will have to add . .profile to your .bash_profile, as .profile is not read by default, if .bash_profile exists

on sudo

• don't run your editor as root, so don't do gksudo gedit «filename»
• Avoid running X11 apps as root, so don't do gksudo gedit «filename»
• instead do EDITOR=gedit sudoedit «filename». It will run the editor as you on a temporary file, it will copy the fill as root when you finish.

Answer 2

The correct place to set your PATH is in ~/.bash_profile:

PATH="$PATH:/some/extra/paths:/may/go/here"

The PATH variable should already be exported, so you shouldn't need to export it again (exporting it again has no further effect).

The default path for bash is hardcoded into the bash executable, and then further (possibly) modified in /etc/profile and (on some systems) /etc/bash.bashrc.

My guess is that the path set in /etc/environment is primarily used by non-shells, such as cron etc.

See also:

• How to permanently set environmental variables

Answer 3

/etc/environment is the system wide fallback. The per-user config in ~/.bash_profile probably overrides it. Regardless, don't mess with /etc/environment for configuring bash, instead put whatever PATH you want in ~/.bash_profile. Even if /etc/environment is wrong it will be overridden by what you put in ~/.bash_profile.

You should probably also restore /etc/environment to what it was before to avoid minor breakage with programs that depend on it. That file comes with the package, so you can use your package manager to reset it to its original form.

Answer 4

update note: I wrote this for zsh but it works for bash as well.

Here is a trick I use to keep my path clean. (Note: I load in zsh configs as separate files. This file needs to load first so an easy way to force that while maintaining standardized naming conventions is to use prefixes. Prefixing with 0_pathfix.zsh will cause this to run before the other Zsh config files.)

# add to path if $1 is not already in path
pathAppend() {

  if ! echo $PATH | egrep -q "(^|:)$1($|:)" ; then
    PATH=$PATH:$1
  fi
}

# filters the path checking against itself for duplicates returns clean path then exports the clean path. 

PATH=$(echo "$PATH" | awk -v RS=':' -v ORS=":" '!a[$1]++{if (NR > 1) printf ORS; printf $a[$1]}'); export PATH;

# This ensures that even if you manually added to the path the next time zsh source is reloaded the path will clean itself.