How can I modify path of a user with no home folder?

Question

I have a user on my RHEL5 system whose home folder is /tmp. This user is for running some monitoring tasks, it doesn't represent a human being.

What are the options for modifying this user's PATH environment variable? I would like to add /usr/sbin to the user's PATH so that it has access to the ethtool command.

At the moment this user's path is /usr/bin:/bin.

Thanks in advance

Rich

Answer 1

why do you want to change the path? you could simply start ethtool with it's full path

# /usr/sbin/ethtool

As far as I remember though ethtool doesn't do much for a normal user as it requires more privileges, but I might be wrong as it has been quite some time since I used it last.

Answer 2

you could change this in /etc/profile. There should be already a statement to set these paths for root.

Answer 3

I would just give the user a home folder like any other user, and set the appropriate configurations there. Having a user who's home folder is /tmp, which is also writeable by other users is iffy from a security point of view.

You didn't mention what shell the user was configured for - that's important as well.

Answer 4

You could also probably add a symlink to ethtool inside /usr/bin

i.e.

ln -s /usr/sbin/ethtool /usr/bin/ethtool

This would circumvent having to mess with the fake user's path.

Answer 5

First run: #:id FAKE and copy the uid.

Using that result, supplement for the word FAKE in the If statement below.

if [ `id -g` = FAKE]; then
    export PATH=$PATH:/usr/sbin/
fi

Add these lines to your /etc/profile.

Test it with: $:sudo -u FAKE echo $PATH

If that doesn't stick at first, you can force the export by using sudo. $:sudo -u FAKE export PATH=$PATH:/usr/bin/ethtool and then run the test again.