UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi!

All the basic linux commands, ie. echo, find, etc, are located in /bin. I have a couple of programs that have these commands pointed towards /usr/bin, ie, /usr/bin/echo (even though the actual 'echo' command is in /bin). How can I alias or redirect or link the /usr/bin to /bin just for this particular user?

Thanks so much!

Answer:

Code:

AIX:/home/vbe $ ll -ld /bin
lrwxrwxrwx    1 bin      bin               8 Sep 15 16:29 /bin -> /usr/bin
HP:  $ ll -ld /bin
lrwxr-xr-t   1 root       sys              8 Jun 23  2003 /bin -> /usr/bin

Most modern systems have all user commands in /usr/bin but for compatibility have a /bin which is a link to /usr/bin...

Yes, my issue is that I have both a /usr/bin and a /bin. Just for this particular user it would be helpful to have some sort of link between the two folders.

Why for only this user, why not just make symlinks and be done with it? Or, better yet, fix the broken scripts?

The scripts aren't "broken". It's a little complicated, but they serve an assortment of solaris and aix systems, all of which have their binaries in what I would consider the "proper place", ie, /usr/bin. Look people, all I'm asking is if anyone can make some sort of alias or symlink work for this folder. If the answer is no, then that's fine. That means that I basically need to go through and set environment variables for /usr/bin on some machines and /bin on others. But honestly, that's not my preference.

What I dont get is all the servers I just looked at (AIX, SOLARIS, HP-UX) the directory is /usr/bin and there is a link to it in / called /bin...
So what do you want to correct? (If if either /bin OR /usr/bin is in the PATH, it will work...)

it might sound stupid but can't you make a symbolic link to user's /bin dir - like this - >

Code:

ln -s /usr/bin/* /yourUser/bin

?