On 2004-01-20, Peter R. Thorsen Jr. wrote:
> Howdy,
>
> I sent this out last week and checked this morning and didn't see the
> article or any replies. So, I'm gonna send it again. I apologize if
> you've read it before...
>
> ---
>
> Me and a guy that I work with were working on a problem the other day
> and the question came up as to where the PATH variable is set for a
> non-interactive session. What I mean by a non-interactive session is
> when you run a command on another machine via ssh using the syntax of
>
> ssh loginname@hostname "command that you wanna run"
>
> When I echo the $PATH in both cases, they are different.
>
> Any ideas?
Yup, depending on which shell you're using the environment can be set
based on several different files. Some of those files might not be used
when you're in a non-interactive session.
Since I use bash, I'll use that as example. It has basically two
"config" files *bashrc[1] and *profile[2]. The rc file is normally run
for non-interactive shells, while the profile does the setup for
interactive shells.
For csh style shells I believe the files are .(t)csh and .login - you'll
also have to check to see what the different files actually does. Do
they set the PATH variable only if you have and interactive terminal or
not?

Oh, and as a final note, ssh is usually compiled to provide some sort of
default PATH as well.

[1] /etc/profile, /etc/bash_profile, ~/.profile or ~/.bash_profile
(Whoever said it was supposed to be simple
[2] /etc/bash.bashrc or ~/.bashrc

HTH
--
Ole-Morten Duesund