Challenge ·Hard

Fix the Broken $PATH: Custom Commands No Longer Found After Login

Mister P
by  Mister P · on
Linux
The laborant user's custom directory /opt/tools/bin was working fine last week. Now, after every login, the commands in that directory are not found — even though they worked in the previous session. Someone touched the shell profile and now the $PATH change doesn't survive a new login shell.
#bash#path#shell-profile#bash-profile#environment

The laborant user reports that the greet command from /opt/tools/bin was working fine in a previous session, but after every new login the command is not found:

-bash: greet: command not found

The user remembers that /opt/tools/bin was added to $PATH somewhere in the shell profile files. Something about that configuration is now broken.

Investigate the shell startup files on rocky-01, diagnose the exact problem, and fix it so that /opt/tools/bin is correctly added to $PATH in every new login shell.

Hint 1 — Where to start

Shell startup files are loaded in a specific order depending on whether the shell is a login shell or an interactive non-login shell. Start by looking at which files exist in the laborant home directory and what they contain.

Hint 2 — Which file is responsible for login shells

On Rocky Linux (and RHEL), ~/.bash_profile is sourced by login shells. ~/.bashrc is sourced by interactive non-login shells. Check whether the PATH export is in the right file.

Hint 3 — Look very carefully at the export line

Even if the export line is in the correct file, it may be syntactically valid Bash but functionally broken. Read every character on the line that sets PATH. Shell redirections (>, >>) appended to an export statement silently misdirect the output — the variable is never actually set.

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curl -sf https://labs.iximiuz.com/cli/install.sh | sh

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