I administer a number of AIX servers in a corporate environment. I've
recently converted to using bash as my personal login shell, but root
is and always has been defined with ksh as its default shell. I can
use "sudo su -" to get to root, and then execute bash, or I can "sudo
su - root -c bash", which does essentially the same thing in a single
command.

The problem: There are a few aliases and variables I'd like to
automatically customize for my bash environment when running as root,
but I don't know how to do it. Firing up bash in this way does not
seem to execute a .bash_profile. When I check my environment
variables, $SHELL is still set to ksh, so I can't use if/then/else
logic in .profile. Redefining the root account to use bash is not an
option, as I am not the only one with root access.

BTW, I typically login to a command line via PuTTY (SSH). No
X-Windows.

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

Steve wrote:
> I administer a number of AIX servers in a corporate environment. I've
> recently converted to using bash as my personal login shell, but root
> is and always has been defined with ksh as its default shell. I can
> use "sudo su -" to get to root, and then execute bash, or I can "sudo
> su - root -c bash", which does essentially the same thing in a single
> command.
>
> The problem: There are a few aliases and variables I'd like to
> automatically customize for my bash environment when running as root,
> but I don't know how to do it. Firing up bash in this way does not
> seem to execute a .bash_profile. When I check my environment
> variables, $SHELL is still set to ksh, so I can't use if/then/else
> logic in .profile. Redefining the root account to use bash is not an
> option, as I am not the only one with root access.
>
> BTW, I typically login to a command line via PuTTY (SSH). No
> X-Windows.
>
> Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

I ran the the commands below and it seems to do what you want. But I
had to use /.bashrc:

cws_sp:/>sudo /usr/bin/ksh
cws_sp:/>su -
root@cws_sp:/>bash
running bash .bashrc
root@cws_sp:/>

Miles

Creating a .bashrc seems to have done the trick. .bash_profile appears
to be ignored no matter what I do.

Thanks,
Steve

Steve <sbassle@ayecontractor.com> wrote:
> I can
> use "sudo su -" to get to root, and then execute bash, or I can "sudo
> su - root -c bash", which does essentially the same thing in a single
> command.
>
> The problem: There are a few aliases and variables I'd like to
> automatically customize for my bash environment when running as root,
> but I don't know how to do it. Firing up bash in this way does not
> seem to execute a .bash_profile.

..bash_profile is only read by login shells, as the bash man page tells you.

Start bash with the -l flag.

Yours,
Laurenz Albe