Share a .profile amongst multiple users

Rwac · 21 Aug 2009 at 14:30

I have a sizeable number of KSH .profile variables I need multiple users within a group to have in their shells.

I can't set it as a system-wide set of variables as it is only the users in the partciular group who should have the variables.

Rather than manually editing each profile - how can I do this elegantly?

randal · 21 Aug 2009 at 14:42

You've got /etc/default/login and /etc/profile you can use for this kinda thing.

Or just deploy the same .profile out to everyone's directory with something like:

Code:

for user in `ls -la /home | awk '{print $3}'` 
do
cp .profile /home/$user
chown -r  $user:<whatever group> /home/$user
done

Where username is derrived from ls-ing the /home directory and using awk to select the second column from this ls output:

Code:

1            2  3            4          5       etc.....
drwxr-xr-x   3 someuser     staff        512 Nov  3  2008 someuser

Rwac · 21 Aug 2009 at 15:21

Found it easiest to just distribute to the users in a group through some scripting.

Great- thanks

Manlove is my forte · 2 Sep 2009 at 15:23

You could put your useful settings in file in a shared area on disk /tmp for example(obviously not the best place) and get everyone to call this file in their .profiles to pick up these settings.

Rwac · 2 Sep 2009 at 19:24

Currently have a script which distributes a file dependent on those users in a certain group using a cat/awk etc of /etc/group

FirebarUK · 2 Sep 2009 at 20:50

You could have something like this in /etc/profile (in pseudo):

if userid=500 then
source /etc/special_bits
./special_bits
some funky command
fi

Copying things over is a bit of a nightmare. I suggest you stick to a single /etc/profile rather than start making ad-hoc ones.