I just installed GMT4 (Generic Mapping Tools) from MacPorts and have run into some serious issues with terminal...
When using the ls command in terminal I get the following:
-bash: ls: command not found
To fix this I've tried many things that I read many different places online. I've changed the following files to include /usr and /bin:
~/.bashrc
~/.bash_profile
~/.profile
Doing so gave me back the sudo command which I had previously lost.
However, I still am not able to use ls in a new terminal window without manually exporting the path("new session"). This has been causing problems when I'm running shell scripts that use system functions. So I'm starting to wonder what exactly those three files do and if maybe having three files doing the same thing is causing them to interfere with one another. If anyone can tell me where I need to add these PATHS that would be great; I dunno, maybe I can delete one of these files or something ELSE is conflicting. Right now I just run " export PATH=$PATH:/usr" in each new terminal window and it works for that session.
I'm running Mac OS X 10.6 on a early 2011 MacBook Pro with 4GB of RAM.
Background for those who are interested:
My end goal is to use Relax to model viscoelastic relaxation in a mid-oceanic ridge system to come up with some sort of constitutive law or power-relation between slip magnitude and the location of greatest tensional stress in the lithosphere due to normal faulting.
The Bash manual actually explains these files fairly thoroughly. However, the manual does not describe how these mechanisms are usually used in practice. What follows is a brief, abridged version of what is common best practice.
.profile is read at login by both sh and bash.
.bashrc is read by non-login Bash shells. By convention, .bash_profile sources .bashrc in turn.
.bash_profile is read at login by Bash. If this file exists, .profile is not read. By convention, .bash_profile should source .profile if it exists.
Related
I've followed these instructions to the letter to move my global npm directory elsewhere, as I was getting permissions issues.
That kinda-worked, but now I can't use npm anywhere unless I input source ~/.profile every time I restart, which is a huge pain.
Is that deliberate? Is there any way around it?
Everything in .bash_profile will be sourced on login.
echo . ~/.profile >> ~/.bash_profile
The way around it is to read and understand the section of the Bash manual that deals with start-up files, and then take appropriate action.
In the latest edition of the Bash manual, this seems to be in section 6.2. The version that ships with macOS is probably older, but there has not been much change in this area lately.
My guess would be that you have a ~/.bash_profile file which takes precedence over ~/.profile, but that is just a guess.
Edit: This post has an answer with a nice graphical flow. It might make sense to source in /etc/profile
This link talks about the different startup files of bash. You can source ~/.profile in one of the start up files automatically rather than type it manually as you are now.
Depending on if you want it to source at login or new terminal window put it in ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bashrc
This link has a good breakdown of the different files as well.
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I've used a number of different *nix-based systems of the years, and it seems like every flavor of Bash I use has a different algorithm for deciding which startup scripts to run. For the purposes of tasks like setting up environment variables and aliases and printing startup messages (e.g. MOTDs), which startup script is the appropriate place to do these?
What's the difference between putting things in .bashrc, .bash_profile, and .environment? I've also seen other files such as .login, .bash_login, and .profile; are these ever relevant? What are the differences in which ones get run when logging in physically, logging in remotely via ssh, and opening a new terminal window? Are there any significant differences across platforms (including Mac OS X (and its Terminal.app) and Cygwin Bash)?
The main difference with shell config files is that some are only read by "login" shells (eg. when you login from another host, or login at the text console of a local unix machine). these are the ones called, say, .login or .profile or .zlogin (depending on which shell you're using).
Then you have config files that are read by "interactive" shells (as in, ones connected to a terminal (or pseudo-terminal in the case of, say, a terminal emulator running under a windowing system). these are the ones with names like .bashrc, .tcshrc, .zshrc, etc.
bash complicates this in that .bashrc is only read by a shell that's both interactive and non-login, so you'll find most people end up telling their .bash_profile to also read .bashrc with something like
[[ -r ~/.bashrc ]] && . ~/.bashrc
Other shells behave differently - eg with zsh, .zshrc is always read for an interactive shell, whether it's a login one or not.
The manual page for bash explains the circumstances under which each file is read. Yes, behaviour is generally consistent between machines.
.profile is simply the login script filename originally used by /bin/sh. bash, being generally backwards-compatible with /bin/sh, will read .profile if one exists.
That's simple. It's explained in man bash:
/bin/bash
The bash executable
/etc/profile
The systemwide initialization file, executed for login shells
~/.bash_profile
The personal initialization file, executed for login shells
~/.bashrc
The individual per-interactive-shell startup file
~/.bash_logout
The individual login shell cleanup file, executed when a login shell exits
~/.inputrc
Individual readline initialization file
Login shells are the ones that are read one you login (so, they are not executed when merely starting up xterm, for example). There are other ways to login. For example using an X display manager. Those have other ways to read and export environment variables at login time.
Also read the INVOCATION chapter in the manual. It says "The following paragraphs describe how bash executes its startup files.", i think that's a spot-on :) It explains what an "interactive" shell is too.
Bash does not know about .environment. I suspect that's a file of your distribution, to set environment variables independent of the shell that you drive.
Classically, ~/.profile is used by Bourne Shell, and is probably supported by Bash as a legacy measure. Again, ~/.login and ~/.cshrc were used by C Shell - I'm not sure that Bash uses them at all.
The ~/.bash_profile would be used once, at login. The ~/.bashrc script is read every time a shell is started. This is analogous to /.cshrc for C Shell.
One consequence is that stuff in ~/.bashrc should be as lightweight (minimal) as possible to reduce the overhead when starting a non-login shell.
I believe the ~/.environment file is a compatibility file for Korn Shell.
I found information about .bashrc and .bash_profile here to sum it up:
.bash_profile is executed when you
login. Stuff you put in there might be
your PATH and other important
environment variables.
.bashrc is used for non login shells.
I'm not sure what that means. I know
that RedHat
executes it everytime you start
another shell (su to this user or
simply calling bash again) You might
want to put aliases in there but again
I am not sure what that means. I
simply ignore it myself.
.profile is the equivalent of
.bash_profile for the root. I think
the name is changed to let other
shells (csh, sh, tcsh) use it as well.
(you don't need one as a user)
There is also .bash_logout wich
executes at, yeah good guess...logout.
You might want to stop deamons or even
make a little housekeeping . You can
also add "clear" there if you want to
clear the screen when you log out.
Also there is a complete follow up on each of the configurations files here
These are probably even distro.-dependant, not all distros choose to have each configuraton with them and some have even more. But when they have the same name, they usualy include the same content.
According to Josh Staiger, Mac OS X's Terminal.app actually runs a login shell rather than a non-login shell by default for each new terminal window, calling .bash_profile instead of .bashrc.
He recommends:
Most of the time you don’t want to maintain two separate config files
for login and non-login shells — when you set a PATH, you want it to
apply to both. You can fix this by sourcing .bashrc from your
.bash_profile file, then putting PATH and common settings in .bashrc.
To do this, add the following lines to .bash_profile:
if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
source ~/.bashrc
fi
Now when you login to your
machine from a console .bashrc will be called.
A good place to look at is the man page of bash. Here's an online version. Look for "INVOCATION" section.
I have used Debian-family distros which appear to execute .profile, but not .bash_profile,
whereas RHEL derivatives execute .bash_profile before .profile.
It seems to be a mess when you have to set up environment variables to work in any Linux OS.
This question already has an answer here:
How to restore .bash_profile on a mac? None of my unix terminal are working [closed]
(1 answer)
Closed 2 years ago.
I receive this error message each time I launch terminal:
-bash: =/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/opt/X11/bin: No such file or directory
You have recently edited one of your shell's startup files and introduced an error.
Probably, ls -lart ~/.bashrc ~/.bash_profile ~/.profile will indicate which one -- if one or more is missing, that's no concern, we just want to see which one out of these you have edited recently. Examine the time stamps and try to remember what you did to change one of these files.
The error probably looks something like
$oopsPATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH
where you meant to say
PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH
but without access to your files, we can't know what exactly is supposed to be there, or how you messed it up.
See also https://askubuntu.com/questions/198730/how-to-restore-bashrc-file/198740#198740
In the common case where you have messed up your PATH so that ls and other commands are unavailable (bash: ls: command not found), you can use the full path (/bin/ls pro ls, etc; though obviously, you have to know the correct path) at least until you can restore your configuration.
PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin
is probably a good crutch until you can find the correct default for your OS. You can type that at the prompt, or put it in one of your shell's startup files and start a new shell.
On many platforms, you can find the default user dot files in /etc/skel so if that's present (which unfortunately will not be true for Mac OS, but should be there on most Linuxes):
cp -b /etc/skel/.bash_profile $HOME/
will replace your (presumably broken beyond repair) .bash_profile with the system default one. (Omit the -b option if your OS doesn't have it, but then you'll want to back up your file manually before replacing it.)
Update: This fragment near the top of your .bash_profile is erroneous:
#loginPath
=/usr/local/bin:$PATH
Just take it out; it doesn't seem to do anything useful. There seem to be multiple additional fragments from the MacPorts installer which look wrong, too, but they are just comments. (Perhaps somehow they shouldn't be?)
It seems that you are missing a necessary PATH and that is why it is saying no such file or directory. If, for example, you get this error message when typing in python, it would mean either that (1) python isn't installed; or (2) python isn't on your system path.
I set up some aliases in my .bash_profile on my Max OS X.
It works but when I'm opening a new tab I always have to load my .bash_profile file with this command:
source ~/.bash_profile
How can I make it work for every terminal I'm opening, even if I'm restarting my Mac or Linux computer?
If you use zsh , you can add source ~/.bash_profile
at the end of .zshrc file at the following path: /Users/YOUR USER NAME/.zshrc , then restart your Terminal/iTerm2 app.
Note that this file is hidden. You can press CMD + SHIFT + . in Finder to
see it, Or just open it in default text editor with the following command from terminal:
open ~/.zshrc
Update
You don't need to do this by hand, run the following command:
echo "source ~/.bash_profile" >> ~/.zshrc
* Dont forget to restart your terminal.
The files executed at the start may be several, usually ~/.bashrc for interactive, non-login shells. The kind I assume you are using.
If so, create an ~/.bashrc file and source ~/.bash_profile in it:
if [ -f ~/.bash_profile ]; then
. ~/.bash_profile
fi
This web site has a lot of information about this.
Study this image, as it is a condensed guide
If you do need to find out exactly which file is being executed, take a look at this web page. It has a lot of specific tests to find out what file is setting what.
Specific for Mac-OS (which is an exception and loads ~/.bash_profile) do as is recomended in the site linked in this answer AFTER you confirm that your bash is doing as explained there.
I know this is a pretty old post, but this problem comes and goes quite oftenly and a lot of laborous solutions are offered. The fact is: being aware of a simple info would solve this pretty fast and easy:
LINUX/Unix OS will load the profile files on startup following the rules below (some distros may have other files names, mainly for user local profiles, but the main rule follows this):
Login Shell
First and foremost: /etc/profile is loaded (global settings);
Next: ˜/.bash_profile (local user settings- other files may be found, like ˜/.profile, depending on the distro. Check documentation).
So, if you are in a Login Shell environment, put all your crazy stuff inside ˜/.bash_profile (or the file provided by your distro) and everything will be fine.
Non-login Shell
First and foremost: /etc/bashrc (some distros will load bash.bashrc);
The next file to be seeked and loaded is ˜/.bashrc
And that's why so many people (just like me) got frustrated having to source their ˜/.bash_profile every single time a Terminal was loaded. We were simply inserting info in the "wrong" file- regarding the kind of shell loaded (see above: login, non-login).
More details on variants of the files mentioned above and some info on login vs non-login shell can be found here.
Hope it helps \o/
This question already has an answer here:
How to restore .bash_profile on a mac? None of my unix terminal are working [closed]
(1 answer)
Closed 2 years ago.
I receive this error message each time I launch terminal:
-bash: =/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/opt/X11/bin: No such file or directory
You have recently edited one of your shell's startup files and introduced an error.
Probably, ls -lart ~/.bashrc ~/.bash_profile ~/.profile will indicate which one -- if one or more is missing, that's no concern, we just want to see which one out of these you have edited recently. Examine the time stamps and try to remember what you did to change one of these files.
The error probably looks something like
$oopsPATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH
where you meant to say
PATH=/usr/local/bin:$PATH
but without access to your files, we can't know what exactly is supposed to be there, or how you messed it up.
See also https://askubuntu.com/questions/198730/how-to-restore-bashrc-file/198740#198740
In the common case where you have messed up your PATH so that ls and other commands are unavailable (bash: ls: command not found), you can use the full path (/bin/ls pro ls, etc; though obviously, you have to know the correct path) at least until you can restore your configuration.
PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin
is probably a good crutch until you can find the correct default for your OS. You can type that at the prompt, or put it in one of your shell's startup files and start a new shell.
On many platforms, you can find the default user dot files in /etc/skel so if that's present (which unfortunately will not be true for Mac OS, but should be there on most Linuxes):
cp -b /etc/skel/.bash_profile $HOME/
will replace your (presumably broken beyond repair) .bash_profile with the system default one. (Omit the -b option if your OS doesn't have it, but then you'll want to back up your file manually before replacing it.)
Update: This fragment near the top of your .bash_profile is erroneous:
#loginPath
=/usr/local/bin:$PATH
Just take it out; it doesn't seem to do anything useful. There seem to be multiple additional fragments from the MacPorts installer which look wrong, too, but they are just comments. (Perhaps somehow they shouldn't be?)
It seems that you are missing a necessary PATH and that is why it is saying no such file or directory. If, for example, you get this error message when typing in python, it would mean either that (1) python isn't installed; or (2) python isn't on your system path.