I have mistakenly (maybe) deleted .profile is that a problem?

System Administration
1

I rent a remote CentOS-Bash shared web hosting environment from Namecheap, to which I SSH with Putty.

In my home directory I did ll and didn't find a .profile file so I thought that there isn't one and then did nano .profile and created such a file from scratch possibly deleting an existing one (unlike ll there, ls -la shows all hidden files there).

All along that time another file named .bash_profile was there intact and unchanged (as evident from ls -la).

Anyway, the system works fine but I still want to ask, should there be any problem from my possible deletion?

2

It is not a "problem" to not have this file; but it is useful to customize your profile. See, for example:

See Also:

https://docs.oracle.com/cd/E19455-01/805-7228/userconcept-25/index.html

And:

....

There is no shortage of .profile examples on the net.

You can even ask ChatGPT, since this is a simple genAI task:

ChatGPT Prompt

create a basic .profile for me

ChatGPT Reponse

Sure! The .profile file is a shell script that's executed for login shells. It usually sets up environment variables and configurations. Here’s a basic template you can use:

sh

# .profile: This file is executed for login shells

# Set up the PATH environment variable
export PATH="$HOME/bin:$PATH"

# Set the default editor
export EDITOR=nano

# Set up the default umask
umask 022

# Define a custom prompt
export PS1='\u@\h:\w\$ '

# Load system-wide environment settings
if [ -f /etc/profile ]; then
    . /etc/profile
fi

# Load user-specific environment settings
if [ -f "$HOME/.bashrc" ]; then
    . "$HOME/.bashrc"
fi

# Set up the terminal type
export TERM=xterm-256color

# Add additional user-specific settings here
# e.g., alias ll='ls -la'

# End of .profile

Key Elements:

  1. PATH Variable: Adds a bin directory in your home directory to the system PATH.
  2. EDITOR Variable: Sets the default editor to nano. Change it to vim, emacs, etc., if preferred.
  3. umask: Sets default permissions for new files.
  4. PS1: Customizes the shell prompt.
  5. System-wide and User-specific Settings: Sources /etc/profile and ~/.bashrc if they exist, allowing for system-wide and additional user-specific configurations.
  6. TERM: Sets terminal type for better terminal compatibility.

You can add additional customizations according to your needs. For example, you might include custom aliases or other environment variables.

End of ChatGPT blah blah genAI stuff

3

Without customisation, you may find such definitions per distro defaults in
/etc/skel

Just copy the file to your $HOME and change ownership to your user.

Regards
Peasant.

4

nano .profile
would have opened+edited an existing file.

.profile is common to all standard shells, so it should not contain bash-specific things (or have it in a
if [ -n "${BASH_VERSION}" ]
clause).

If your login shell is bash (defined in /etc/passwd) then it prefers .bash_profile; it won't process .profile if .bash_profile exists.
But bash always processes a system /etc/profile before a user's .bash_profile or .profile
So a .bash_profile must not source /etc/profile unless it should run it again. And in general .profile should not source /etc/profile.
chatgpt picked the wrong sources (again).

Some distros build bash with different defaults. But
man bash
on your system should be correct; look for the INVOCATION section.

5

'nano' is an edit command not a delete command. Nano would have displayed the pre-existing contents of .profile if it existed.

1 Like
6

Indeed, as I recall, when Nano opened, there was no file data in the edit space so the file didn't exist then, apparently.

7

Agreed.