UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

can you post your .profile file? It's probably a syntax error.

Here it is:

# This is the default standard profile provided to a user.
# They are expected to edit it to meet their own needs.

PATH="/usr/j2se:/usr/j2se/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/java"



MAIL=/usr/mail/${LOGNAME:?}


I just copied the default from /etc/skel and added the path.

Add the following under the PATH line
export PATH

Did it.

Same results. Wierd, huh?

Can you post the root entry from /etc/passwd?

I don't understand why you wrote that the default shell is -sh.
Default shell for root should be /bin/sh.

(Never mind...see the next post by Perderabo - he nailed it!

And it's been quite some time since using sh for root for me - our organization changed to ksh about 3 years ago - you were correct, /sbin/sh. I've been changing my workstation root account to test this problem - hard to remember all of this and try to get work done too!)

Have you really posted the complete contents of your .profile?

The error message that you posted is the result of a line something like this:
export $PATH
when what you really want is
export PATH

Make your first line of .profile be
echo .profile first line
and your last line of .profile be
echo .profile last line

If the .profile is the culprit, the error will appear between the two lines.

I did a fresh install of solaris 8 and got /sbin/sh for root's default shell. This will show up in ps as "-sh". The leading minus sign always happens for a login shell.