Newbie .profile and /etc/profile question

A

aaronbsdf

I am new to Unix, and I am trying to declare a variable. I edit /etc/profile to read:

Code: 
VARIABLE=Variable
export VARIABLE

Saved, exit. I did the same thing to a standard user account in the .profile. When I run echo $VARIABLE I get noting but a blank line as root. Strangely, the user account can successfully echo the variable, but ONLY when SSH'd into the system.

My question is why when I declare a variable in a .profile or in /etc/profile, it never works unless SSH'd into localhost?

TIA
 
The files /etc/profile and ~/.profile are only read by bourne shells like /bin/sh. The root's shell defaults to csh(1) that uses a different set of initialization files with different syntax, /etc/csh.cshrc and ~/.cshrc (there are couple more depending on if the shell is a login shell or not, consult the man page).
 
Thanks @kpa. So I take it when I ssh into localhost I am using the Bourne shell as a standard user account, but when I log into a terminal I am using csh which is why declaring the variable has a null result. Makes sense.

The weird thing is I do the same thing in Debian and get the same result. Pretty sure I am using bash there, but I'll check it.
 
Last edited by a moderator:
Actually that can't be the problem. As a standard user I echo a variable it fails. Then I SSH into localhost as the same user and the variable works!

Code: 
echo $SHELL 
/bin/sh

Same shell.
Hmmmm... Weird.
 
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