What is the difference between /etc/skel and /etc/profile

An administrator may find it desirable to define system-wide settings or to configure initial settings for users. The files and directories that follow give the administrator the flexibility to make a variety of configurations, which may be later customized by a user for their own specific needs.

This may be more effective for administrators to configure if there are settings that apply to all users. This approach enables administrators to define global shell settings, but still allow user-specific customizations. The first line defines the paths of executable files; the second line defines the path for where incoming email messages are stored; and the third line defines the default text editor.

The last line actually ensures these variables are implemented in the environment. Skip to primary navigation Skip to main content Skip to primary sidebar Skip to footer navigation. System security is a major concern. As a sysadmin, as I've stated before, it's your primary concern.

Adding users to a system decreases security. Your job is to create a usable but secure environment for your users. You have corporate assets to protect, systems to maintain, and users to satisfy. There's often a conflict among those three aspects of system administration, as you well know.

One way to satisfy all three is to customize your user's environments by implementing and enforcing a corporate standard. Striking a balance between user productivity and system security isn't easy. I can't write specifications for your particular situation, but I can show you where to make the necessary changes so that you can do so. When you create a new user account on a system, these three files are copied to the user's home directory and are owned by the user.

In case you don't know, so-called dot files those named with a preceding dot. To see them, you must use the -a switch with the ls command. As you can see, these files are owned by root and can only be edited or changed by the root user. It's most important because it is the only "required" file in the list. It executes every time the user logs into a system, it launches the.

Its default settings are simple. The contents of the. You could call other files configured for certain user groups as well. For example, if a user is a member of the finance group, you could call a file to set up a particular set of variables for all users in the finance group. Both files come with the following warning. You can see that many of the files are for use in the C shell. The most important file for this article's focus is sh. The contents of sh. As you can see from the message, if you want to override any currently configured envvar Environment variables entries with a corporate standard, make entries in this file to do that.

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