I am using Perlbrew in a brand new server (CentOs 6).
In my previous system (RedHat 4) WiTHOUT Perlbrew I used to use some aliases in the bash shell, like alias nreload='/usr/local/nginx/sbin/nginx -s reload' for example, to restart Nginx just putting the line in the .bash_profile file.
Now, with Perlbrew, I tried it in .bash_profile and in .bashrc, with no luck. I can make aliases on the fly, but I can't have them permanently available.
I followed the Perlbrew installation tips and copied the line source ~/perl5/perlbrew/etc/bashrc in the .bashrc file. I thought it should activate the Perlbrew Perl just by logging-in to the server, but it doesn't. So I must write source ~/perl5/perlbrew/etc/bashrc; everytime I need to use the Perlbrew Perl. It doesn't seems to be the right way.
Maybe the real problem is how I run Perlbrew. Maybe I do not understand the concept of Perlbrew opening another shell. If there is another shell, a subshell, how can I use alias in it?
Here is the content of my .bash_profile:
# .bash_profile
# Get the aliases and functions
if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
. ~/.bashrc
fi
# User specific environment and startup programs
PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin
source ~/perl5/perlbrew/etc/bashrc
export PATH
alias nreload='/usr/local/nginx/sbin/nginx -s reload'
BTW: the server is a remote one, and I control it from a local Macintosh, using Terminal. I have read something about Terminal is more a visual tool than a real Unix terminal, but I do not completely understand it.
I have found the way: aliases must be in .bashrc
I connect using (Macintosh) Terminal, and when logged to the online server I just "activate" a new shell typing "/bin/bash".
In this new shell I have the right Perlbrew Perl, an all the alias, because this new shell takes everything from the .bashrc file.
What confused me was that "a new shell" is not really "a new terminal window" as I was expecting, but a new "process", and this new process, obviously uses .bashrc as a start point.
Related
this is probably a very basic question. I am using the bash shell still (Catalina). And I downloaded gromacs. Every time I open a new terminal window I first have to put
source /usr/local/gromacs/bin/GMXRC
in first, otherwise I will just get command not found.
How can I permanently source this so that I don't have to reenter it all the time?
I tried editing the /etc/paths file but that didn't work.
If you are still using the bash shell on macOS, all you have to do is:
Put the line:
source /usr/local/gromacs/bin/GMXRC
at the end in .bash_profile.
.bash_profile is in home directory, so you can open it like:
open ~/.bash_profile
Why .bash_profile?
.bash_profile is executed whenever a login interactive shell starts and on mac, every interactive shell is a login shell by default.
If in case you switch to zsh, instead of .bash_profile, I think .zlogin should be used.
But that would depend entirely on your need. Read about zsh configuration files in case you ever need that.
I'm trying to make a bash alias for traversing through a few folders, but the alias does not save after I close terminal.
I've already saved the alias in the .bashsrc file and have also have run the command . ~/.bashsrc.
Here's what I've done:
sudo nano .bashsrc
Inside bashsrc:
alias x = 'cd Documents/Photos/Family'
And then saved and exit.
. ~/.bashsrc
The alias works in that terminal window, but shows "command not found" if I restart terminal or open a new tab.
You should prefer setting your changes in ~/.bashrc and ~/.bash_profile.
alias x='cd Documents/Photos/Family'
Also, remember aliases won’t be exported to subshells and while using this alias you always need to be present in the directory where Documents is present. I guess your Documents directory is present in home, so it would be better if you do something like:
alias x="cd "$HOME"/Documents/Photos/Family"
Just add this line to the end of both the files and save.
In simple language there are two types of shells for your case, login and non-login interactive shell.
Before starting of a login shell, .bash_profile is sourced and before starting of a non-login shell .bashrc is sourced.
So you should add your changes in both.
If you are on macOS, .bashrc is next to useless for your case. MacOS would treat every shell you open in terminal as a login shell. Although there are some exceptions which i don’t remember.
As mentioned by David in the comments, in some distros ~/.bash_profile is just ~/.profile (e.g. Debian, openSUSE, etc).
I am trying to create a permanent alias for my terminal. I put the alias in my ~/.profile, ~/.bashrc, and ~/.bash_profile files, previously empty. When I start a new terminal, bash does not recognize the alias, but if I source any of them, it does. Why are these not getting run when I open a terminal? I am on OSX.
Newer MacOS versions use zsh as the default shell for both Terminal and iTerm2. Run echo $SHELL to confirm if this is the case for you.
Zsh looks for a .zshrc file upon shell startup, so to continue using zsh while sourcing the contents of your bash profile, you can run the following:
echo "source ~/.bash_profile" >> ~/.zshrc
Open a new terminal window for the changes to take effect.
Two things need to happen here when using iTerm to get the loading of dotfiles to work.
First you should add the following to your .bash_profile
[[ -s ~/.bashrc ]] && source ~/.bashrc
Secondly you will need to ensure that in iTerm preferences your terminal is set to launch a login shell.
Hope this helps!
Using the default mac terminal, what worked for me was to add a command to run on start up to source my .bash_profile.
Preferences > Profile > Startup > Add command 'source ~/.bash_profile'
Mac terminal preferences window screenshot
Might be considered to be a bit hacky, but it does the trick.
Adding source ~/.profile to my .bash_profile worked for me.
As of High Sierra, both Terminal and iTerm want to load ~/.profile first. So I suggest you put one line in your .profile to make your Mac work like other Unixes:
source ~/.bash_profile
By editing this one file, you won't have to search through the menus of multiple apps to override Apple's bizarre behavior in each.
As of Catalina the default shell is now zsh. You can change it back to bash with chsh -s /bin/bash and that should load your .profile or .bash_profile
Why are your shell's initialization files not loading?
As with most things, It Depends ™
I recently experienced the same phenomenon and went through the following exercise to resolve it:
I use iTerm. iTerm runs a login shell by default. Verify in iTerm Preferences > General > Command > (*) Login Shell
Therefore, I know that ~/.bash_profile will always be called.
Knowing that, I put the following in my ~/.bash_profile file:
for file in ~/.{bashrc,bash_exports,bash_aliases,bash_functions}; do
[ -r "$file" ] && source "$file"
done
unset file
Notice that I use separate files for .bashrc, .bash_exports, etc. It keeps things separate and simple.
Note also that /etc/profile is loaded first, but since I have never used that system wide init file, I knew that that was not my problem. For details check out $ man bash
So, I started with my ~/.bash_profile file.
I found that when I installed Canopy Express that it's installer replaced the contents of my ~/.bash_profile file with the following content:
# Added by Canopy installer on 2017-04-19
# VIRTUAL_ENV_DISABLE_PROMPT can be set to '' to make the bash prompt show that Canopy is active, otherwise 1
alias activate_canopy="source '/Users/lex/dev/python/User/bin/activate'"
# VIRTUAL_ENV_DISABLE_PROMPT=1 source '/Users/lex/dev/python/User/bin/activate'
p.s. Canopy is an excellent, free python IDE, that I highly recommend.
Fortunately, I backup my ~/.bash* files so restoring that was easy and quickly fixed my issue.
My advice would be to understand the order of calls to your initialization files and start with the first one and work your way through them until you find the problem.
Oh, and you may want to verify which shell you are using (I use bash):
~ $ echo $SHELL
/usr/local/bin/bash
I am guessing you may use another shell, such as bash, tcsh, sh, zsh etc.
Put source .bash_profile into your appropriate 'bashrc' file will make the auto loading recovered, i.e.
.login for tcsh, .bash_profile for bash, .zshrc for zsh
My issue was solved by unchecking Preferences > General > tmux >
Use "tmux" profile rather than profile of the connecting session
Most likely, you need to create the files yourself as they appear not to exist by default. You should give them execute permission to make them run.
~ % sudo chmod 700 ~/.bash_profile
Also, you should check the ownership of the files. They should belong to current user rather than root. Otherwise, you will get permission denied error.
~ % ls -a -l
~ % sudo chown <user_name> ~/.bash_profile
Finally, please note that bash looks in your home directory for .bash_profile, .bash_login, and .profile in order. Bash will stop looking if the first is found.
This means if you have both .bash_profile and .profile files, the .profile will not run.
For more information
Hope this would help you.
Little late to the party but it seems that the file .zprofile is the equivalent to that of .bash_profile when loading zsh. I used this instead to execute a few commands on startup. Of course this only valid for a specific iTerm setup with zsh.
https://zsh.sourceforge.io/Intro/intro_3.html
I've used bash for two years, and just tried to switch to zsh shell on my OS X via homebrew. And I set my default (login) shell to zsh, and I confirmed it's set properly by seeing that when I launch my Terminal, it's zsh shell that is used in default.
However, when I try to enter bash shell from within zsh, it looks like not loading ~/.bash_profile, since I cannot run my command using aliases, which is defined in my ~/.bash_profile like alias julia="~/juila/julia", etc.. Also, the prompt is not what I set in the file and instead return bash-3.2$.
For some reasons, when I set my login shell to bash, and enter zsh from within bash, then ~/.zshrc is loaded properly.
So why is it not loaded whenever I run bash from within zsh? My ~/.bash_profile is symbolic linked to ~/Dropbox/.bash_profile in order to sync it with my other computers. Maybe does it cause the issue?
Open ~/.zshrc, and at the very bottom of the file, add the following:
if [ -f ~/.bash_profile ]; then
. ~/.bash_profile;
fi
Every time you open the terminal, it will load whatever is defined in ~/.bash_profile (if the file exist). With that, you can keep your custom settings for zsh (colors, and etc). And you get to keep your custom shell settings in .bash_profile file.
This is much cleaner than using bash -l IMO.
If you prefer putting your settings in .bashrc, or .bash_login, or .profile , you can do the same for them.
Similarly, you could also move the common profile settings to separate file, i.e. .my_common_profile, and add the following to both .bash_profile and .zshrc:
if [ -f ~/.my_common_profile ]; then
. ~/.my_common_profile;
fi
An interactive bash reads your ~/.bash_profile if it's a login shell, or your ~/.bashrc if it's not a login shell.
A typical .bash_profile will contain something like:
if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then . ~/.bashrc; fi
so .bashrc can contain commands to be executed by either login or non-login shells.
If you run bash -l rather than just bash, it should read your .bash_profile.
Reference: https://www.gnu.org/software/bash/manual/html_node/Bash-Startup-Files.html
For those who have just installed zsh and want their alias from bash to work on zsh do the following
Open .zshrc file in vim like so
vi ~/.zshrc
Scroll to the bottom
click "i" to enable write mode
Tell zsh to load items from bash_profile when needed like so
source ~/.bash_profile
Write and quit like so
:wq
Refresh your zsh like so
source ~/.zshrc
That's it. Now all your saved alias in .bash_profile will be ready to use in zsh.
To complement #Keith Thompson's excellent answer:
macOS:
As #chepner puts it succinctly (emphasis mine):
In OS X, bash is not used as part of the initial [at boot time] login process, and the Terminal.app (or other terminal emulators) process exists outside any pre-existing bash sessions, so each new window [or tab - read: interactive bash shell] (by default) treats itself as a new login session.
As a result, some OSX users only ever create ~/.bash_profile, and never bother with ~/.bashrc, because ALL interactive bash shells are login shells.
Linux:
On Linux, the situation is typically reversed:
bash shells created interactively are [interactive] NON-login shells, so it is ~/.bashrc that matters.
As a result, many Linux users only ever deal with ~/.bashrc.
To maintain bash profiles that work on BOTH platforms, use the technique #Keith Thompson mentions:
Put your definitions (aliases, functions, ...) in ~/.bashrc
Add the following line to ~/.bash_profile
[[ -f ~/.bashrc ]] && . ~/.bashrc
Copy the contents from ~/.bash_profile and paste them at the bottom of ~/.zshrc file.
For ZSH users on MacOs, I ended up with a one liner.
At the very bottom of the ~/.zshrc I added the following line :
bash -l
What it does is simply load the .bash_profile settings(aliases, function, export $PATH, ...)
If you decide to get rid of ZSH and go back to plain BASH, you'll be back to normal with no hassle at all.
If this is something that you do infrequently, or it just isn't appropriate to make changes, you can also 'source' the .bash_profile after launching the child bash shell.
. ~/.bash_profile
This will pull in the settings you make in the .bash_profile script for the life of that shell session. In most cases, you should be able to repeat that command, so it's also an easy way to test any changes that you make without needing to do a full login, as well as bring all of your existing shell sessions up-to-date if you make upgrades to the .bash_profile &/or .bashrc files.
For macOS Big Sur (Version 11.5.2)
Open .zshrc
For example: sudo nano ~/.zshrc
At the end of the file add source ~/.bash_profile
Every time you open the terminal the contents inside the bash profile will be loaded.
Recently I installed oh-my-zsh on OS X and set zsh as default shell and faced the same problem.
I solved this problem by adding source ~/.bash_profile at the end of .zshrc file.
I am using a zsh framework called oh my zsh and I have tried most of the solutions listed here and it broke the format for my custom theme. However, these steps worked for me.
Add new alias(es) at the bottom of my .bash_profile
vi ~/.bash_profile
Make zsh to load items from .bash_profile
source ~/.bash_profile
Refresh zsh
source ~/.zshrc
Restart OSX Terminal app
Try your new alias!
If you'd like to be "profile-centric", you can create .profile as a single source of truth, then load it from both .bash_profile and .zprofile.
.profile
export PATH="/usr/local/opt/python/libexec/bin:$PATH"
# etc., etc.
.bash_profile and .zprofile
if [ -f ~/.profile ]; then
. ~/.profile;
fi
I found this helped bash scripts find the right PATH, etc., and helped me keep configuration in one place.
I'm following a tutorial called Starting a Django 1.4 Project the Right Way, which gives directions on how to use virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper, among other things.
There's a section that reads:
If you're using pip to install packages (and I can't see why you wouldn't), you can get both virtualenv and virtualenvwrapper by simply installing the latter.
$ pip install virtualenvwrapper
After it's installed, add the following lines to your shell's start-up file (.zshrc, .bashrc, .profile, etc).
export WORKON_HOME=$HOME/.virtualenvs
export PROJECT_HOME=$HOME/directory-you-do-development-in
source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh
Reload your start up file (e.g. source .zshrc) and you're ready to go.
I am running Mac OSX, and don't know my way around the Terminal too well. What exactly does the author mean by shell's start-up file (.zshrc, .bashrc, .profile, etc)? Where do I find this file, so that I can add those three lines?
Also, what does he mean by reload your start up file (e.g. source .zshrc)?
I would appreciate a detailed response, specific to OSX.
You're probably using bash so just add these 3 lines to ~/.bash_profile:
$ cat >> ~/.bash_profile
export WORKON_HOME=$HOME/.virtualenvs
export PROJECT_HOME=$HOME/directory-you-do-development-in
source /usr/local/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh
^D
where ^D means you type Control+D (EOF).
Then either close your terminal window and open a new one, or you can "reload" your .bash_profile like this:
$ source ~/.bash_profile
If you use bash, it usually means ~/.bash_profile.
In Terminal and iTerm new shells are login shells by default, so ~/.bashrc is not read at all. If instructions written for some other platform tell you to add something to .bashrc, you often have to add it to .bash_profile instead.
If both ~/.profile and ~/.bash_profile exist, only .bash_profile is read. .profile is also read by other shells, but many of the things you'd add to .bash_profile wouldn't work with them.
From /usr/share/doc/bash/bash.html:
When bash is invoked as an interactive login shell, or as a non-interactive shell with the --login option, it first reads and executes commands from the file /etc/profile, if that file exists. After reading that file, it looks for ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, and ~/.profile, in that order, and reads and executes commands from the first one that exists and is readable.
[...]
When an interactive shell that is not a login shell is started, bash reads and executes commands from ~/.bashrc, if that file exists.
I have Anaconda install, so I add these 3 lines to ~/.bash_profile
export WORKON_HOME=$HOME/.virtualenvs
export PROJECT_HOME=$HOME/Documents/Python
source /Users/Username/anaconda3/bin/virtualenvwrapper.sh
and then reload profile by:
$ source ~/.bash_profile
I use an approach that I think is easy to maintain.
It also works well if you sometimes use Ubuntu systems, however I will be sure to address the OP's OSX requirement in my answer.
Create a .aliases file with your alias(es) in your home directory, e.g. ~/.aliases
Execute this file from your .bashrc file (this is executed each time for a new shell process) with source ~/.aliases. This is all you would actually need to do for Ubuntu btw.
On OSX call .bashrc from your ~/.profile file, i.e. have ~/.bash_profile contain: source ~/.bashrc