Customising your environment

In the Unix shell variables are temporary.

If you close your terminal and log back in, you will find that any changes to PATH and any aliases you created have gone. You will need to set them all up again if you want them to work.

However, if you put them in a login script, they’ll be setup every time you login.

Those dot files

Remember those hidden files in your home directory? Some of them are actually pretty useful.

• .bash_profile is a script that runs every time you log in to the system
• .bashrc is a script that runs every time you start a new interactive shell
• It’s quite common for .bash_profile to include a command to run .bashrc automatically

Both of these are already set up for you on Legion, but you can improve them as you like.