About the User's Work Environment

This section covers the following information is described in this section:

• Using Site Initialization Files

• Avoiding Local System References

• Shell Features

• Bash and ksh93 Shell History

• Bash and Korn Shell Environment Variables

• Customizing the Bash Shell

• MANPATH Environment Variable

• PATH Environment Variable

• Locale Variables

• Default File Permissions (umask)

• Customizing a User Initialization File

Part of setting up a user's home directory is providing user initialization files for the user's login shell. A user initialization file is a shell script that sets up a work environment for a user after the user logs in to a system. Basically, you can perform any task in a user initialization file that you can do in a shell script. However, a user initialization file's primary job is to define the characteristics of a user's work environment, such as a user's search path, environment variables, and windowing environment. Each login shell has its own user initialization file or files, which are listed in the following table. Note that the default user initialization file for both the bash and ksh93 shells is /etc/skel/local.profile.

You can use these files as a starting point and then modify them to create a standard set of files that provide the work environment common to all users. You can also modify these files to provide the working environment for different types of users.

For step-by-step instructions on how to create sets of user initialization files for different types of users, see How to Customize User Initialization Files.