UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

Hi,

Using ksh, I have set up aliases (which work fine) in my user's .profile like this:

Code:

alias ll = 'ls -lrt'

Code:

alias cls = 'clear'

How do I call these same aliases so that they will work after issuing this: ?

Code:

su - user

I do not want to add aliases to the su shell's .profile or .kshrc.

Just source in your aliases after the su.

Code:

. /path/to/your/aliases.ksh

Awesome. Thank you!

By setting the variable "ENV" you can designate a resource file to be used for shell startup. per default this resource file is ~/.kshrc, which is why this gets executed at shell startup.

Since you probably have several people using the root-account and want everybody have its own configuration being read, put the following into root's profile to set the environment according to the user you came from:

Code:

origuser="$(who -lm)"
origuser="${%% *}"

exec ENV="~${origuser}/.kshrc"
export ENV

Attention: i am not sure if "-l" and "-m" are standard options for who. On AIX the exist doing:

You might need to adapt the command accordingly.

I hope this helps.

bakunin

I have the following alias in my local user profile:

Code:

PS1=`logname`@`hostname -s`:'$PWD>'

This appears as:

Code:

user@machineName:/home/user>

How can I make the logname parameter reflect the su user after su'ing?

So it would look like:

Code:

suUser@machineName:/home/suUser>

Try

Code:

PS1='\u@\h:$PWD>'

That's bash.
Other shells might take

Code:

if [ -z "$USER" ]; then
 export USER
 USER="$LOGNAME"
 if [ -z "$USER" ]; then
  USER=`PATH=/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/ucb whoami`
 fi
fi
if [ -z "$HOST" ]; then
 HOST=`uname -n | cut -f1 -d.`
 export HOST
fi
PS1='$USER@${HOST}:$PWD>'

Second solution worked like a charm.