Emergency Help Needed

[Rubicone]

For some reason I keep getting the "command not found" error message when trying anyone of a number of commands. The most recent being the shutdown one. It has worked up to now but at a loss as to why this is happening. I have checked the permissions on the shutdown command and they are 755. I am logged in as root.

When I type echo $PATH I get the following output to the screeen:

/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/X11R6/:/home/Rubicone/bin

When I issue the which shutdown command the output is:

/usr/bin/which: no shutdown in (within here is the path as noted above)

When I issue the whence shutdown then the aforementioned command not found error message is displayed.

 

[stirling]

my shutdown is in /sbin. add that to yr path.

[edit:] /usr/sbin, too, while you're at it

 

[Rubicone]

How exactly do I do that? I am a newbie at this. TIA.

 

[stirling]

prompt> echo "export PATH=$PATH:/sbin:/usr/sbin" >> ~/.bash_profile

 

[Rubicone]

Doesn't the echo command simply display what you have written within the quotation marks? Or, will it also change the path?

 

[stirling]

That's what the >> is for. It writes it to the end of your .bash_profile.
Forgot, you also need to either login again or resource your .bash_profile with:
prompt>$ . ~/.bash_profile

 

[Rubicone]

What does resourcing one's bash profile do exactly?

 

[stirling]

basically it's just reinitializing/rereading the file without having to login again. useful when you've just added some environment variable or alias

 

[n0cmonkey]

EDIT: content deleted in favor of niceness.

I hope all of your questions were answered. If you need anymore answered, please post them and I will do my best to solve them!