[Sig] Questions from the meeting

[LFessen106@aol.com]

In a message dated 4/23/01 10:30:03 PM Eastern Daylight Time, 
dann@thelinuxlink.net writes:

> The one question that arose at the linux sig lab meeting tonite was how to
>  refresh a profile after you have made changes.  There is two ways to do
>  this.
>  
>  Say you edited the .bashrc file in your home directory to include a
>  different path.  Instead of logging out, and loggin back in again, just
>  type:
>  
>  source .bashrc (or the complete path if not in your home dir)
>  or
>  . .bashrc
>  
>  This also works for .bash_profile.
>  
>  Remember, when you first log in, .bash_profile is the file that is read. 
>  For each instance of a shell or xterm thereafter, .bashrc is referenced.
>  

Hi all, sorry I couldn't be there last night to help, but at any rate, I have 
an addendum to the above..  Never do this.... And I'll give you the reason 
why:
The reason you should never ever change your shell settings on your *current* 
login is it is possible to completely hose your profiles so thatyou *cant* 
log in - effectively killing your user account.  The proper way to do this is 
actually to shell in to your user account while you're still in it to "check" 
it.  That way if you made a mistake, you can fix it from the original login.  
Shelling into your account while your still in it is quite easy and can be 
done simply by:
1) telnet'ing into your computer from your computer and logging in as yourself
2) rsh'ing (same as above)
3) ssh'ing (same as above)
4) change virtual console and log in again.
It is also especially important to do this kind of checking if you are making 
any modifications to the "root" account.

P.S. I had to learn this the hard way :-)

-Linc Fessenden

The nice thing about Windows is - It does not just crash, it displays a
dialog box and lets you press 'OK' first.