UNIX for Dummies Questions & Answers

I have modified the .profile in my profile and I don't see any effect.
Why the changes don't have effect?
I tried both on the account at a server where I have limited permissions as user and to my local pc (as user).

Is it the .profile overridden by some other file? It looks weird because I think it shouldn't be and it isn't as far as I have read till now.

To be more exact, I log out and I log in after the changes and I see no difference in the login process. On the other hand, the changes in the .bash_logout file affect the logout operation.

Maybe at my local machine the output is not shown when I just open a terminal (I am using Ubuntu) but what about the remote machine? It shouldn't be different when I log in?

Sorry if my question sounds silly. As you can see, I am newbie here.

what are the changes and which shell do you use?

I use bash and I even tried the echo. I didn't see any difference.
I am quoting the first part of the .profile.

The first line was already in the .profile

the last line works fine for me... i changed it a little bit to:

echo `who | wc -l` "user(s) are online"

and is bash the shell thats in yout /etc/passwd file for your user (is it the login shell)?

Code:

echo $SHELL
/bin/bash

Code:

cat /etc/passwd | grep bash
root:x:0:0:root:/root:/bin/bash

Do these prove that I run bash?

Thanks for the help DukeNuke2.

should be in the same file... maybe grep für your username... or do you use nis or ldap on your system? then your account data is maybe on an other server (nis master...).

hth

Indeed. We use LDAP. So do I have to find the LDAP server which is used in order to modify my .profile?

Thanks for the help till now. I have found very useful things while I was searching for more informations.