In .profile, why is alias not working?

Added note: there's nothing wrong per se with the commands being invoked by the aliases. Thus if in Terminal I directly execute the following, it works as expected:

sudo /usr/local/mysql/support-files/mysql.server start

vonkempnz wrote:

It sounds like bash is not accessing your .profile when logging in via terminal.

You could try renaming your .profile to .bash_profile, or better still, create .bash_profile and add one line with ~/.profile to pick up the aliases.

How could it be that bash is not accessing my ~/.profile, given that all the additions to PATH that I've set in ~/.profile are recognized, as I see if I execute "echo $PATH" ? And given that the custom prompt exported from ~/.profile is also appearing?

One further peculiarity I had not seen before this problem arose: when I open Terminal, I see that expected prompt followed by "bash" (no quotes) on the first line and then a new line just with my prompt/

I don't see anything in my ~/.profile that could be calling bash again. Here's the whole file (with commented-out lines omitted):

# Modify prompt:

export PS1="[\u@\h:\w]$ "

# MacPorts Installer addition: adding an appropriate PATH variable for use with MacPorts.

export PATH=/opt/local/bin:/opt/local/sbin:/opt/local/apache2/bin:$PATH

export CLASSPATH=$CLASSPATH:/Volumes/MacHD/Users/murray/Library/texmf/texhyphj

# to allow GTK+Quartz

export CPPFLAGS="-I/opt/local/include $CPPFLAGS"

export LDFLAGS="-L/opt/local/lib $LDFLAGS"

# Setting PATH for TeX binaries

export PATH=/usr/texbin:$PATH

# Setting PATH for Python 3.3

PATH="${PATH}:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.3/bin"

export PATH

# Setting PATH for Python 2.7

PATH="${PATH}:/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin"

export PATH

# added by Anaconda 1.7.0 installer

export PATH="$PATH:/Volumes/MacHD/Applications/Programming/Python/anaconda/bin"

export PATH=$PATH:"/Volumes/MacHD/Users/murray/Library/Application Support/GoodSync"

export PATH="$PATH:/Volumes/MacHD/Users/murray/bin"

export PATH=$PATH:/Volumes/MacHD/Applications/Math/Singular/3-1-6/ix86Mac-darwin

alias tomcat7start='/Library/Tomcat/bin/startup.sh'

alias tomcat7stop='/Library/Tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh'

# Set apachectl alias for MacPorts apache2

alias apache2ctl='sudo /opt/local/apache2/bin/apachectl'

alias apachestart='sudo /opt/local/apache2/bin/apachectl -k start'

alias apachestop='sudo /opt/local/apache2/bin/apachectl -k stop'

alias apacherestart='sudo /opt/local/apache2/bin/apachectl restart'

# Set aliases for native MySQL from dev.mysql.com

alias mysqlclient='/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql'

alias mysqladmin='/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqladmin'

export PATH=/usr/local/mysql/bin:$PATH

alias mysqlctl='sudo /usr/local/mysql/support-files/mysql.server'

alias mysqlstart='mysqlctl start'

alias mysqlstop='mysqlctl stop'

alias mysqlstatus='ps aux | grep mysql | grep -v grep'

Note that in the posted code from my ~/.profile, the line-length of this editor chopped a long line, beginning with "export" and ending with "anaconda/bin"" into two. Ditto a couple other lines.

I tried the method recommended at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18773051/how-to-make-os-x-to-read-bash-profil e-not-profile-file, namely, to move all the commands formerly in ~/.profile into ~/.bashrc and then to create ~/.bash_profile consisting of lines:

if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then

source ~/.bashrc

fi

(And of course delete ~/.profile).

That does now allow my alias commands (formerly in ~/.profile and now in ~/.bashrc) to work in Terminal.

However, now executing in Terminal echo $PATH gives my entire path (as defined in ~/.bashrc) twice -- in a rather strange order of duplication:

/usr/local/mysql/bin

/usr/texbin

/opt/local/bin

/opt/local/sbin

/opt/local/apache2/bin

/usr/local/mysql/bin

/usr/texbin

/opt/local/bin

/opt/local/sbin

/opt/local/apache2/bin

/usr/bin

/bin

/usr/sbin

/sbin

/usr/local/bin

/opt/X11/bin

/usr/local/MacGPG2/bin

/usr/texbin

/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.3/bin

/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin

/Volumes/MacHD/Applications/Programming/Python/anaconda/bin

/Volumes/MacHD/Users/murray/Library/Application Support/GoodSync

/Volumes/MacHD/Users/murray/bin

/Volumes/MacHD/Applications/Math/Singular/3-1-6/ix86Mac-darwin

/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.3/bin

/Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/2.7/bin

/Volumes/MacHD/Applications/Programming/Python/anaconda/bin

/Volumes/MacHD/Users/murray/Library/Application Support/GoodSync

/Volumes/MacHD/Users/murray/bin

/Volumes/MacHD/Applications/Math/Singular/3-1-6/ix86Mac-darwin

So something is still wrong!

Linc Davis wrote:

From the sh(1) man page:

When  bash is invoked as an interactive login shell, or as a non-inter- active shell with the --login option, it first reads and executes  com- mands  from  the file /etc/profile, if that file exists.  After reading that file, it looks for ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, and ~/.profile, in  that order, and reads and executes commands from the first one that exists and is readable.

Yes, I know that. That's why I had made sure I had no `~/.bash_profile` or `~/.bash_login`. And in any case it doesn't explain what was wrong, since while my `alias` settings in `~/.profile` were not being effected, all my path settings in `~/.profile` *were* being effected.

(That's before I used the `~/.bashrc` plus `~/.bash_profile` combination (with no `~/.profile`) described in other posts to this thread.)

murrayE wrote:

I tried the method recommended at http://stackoverflow.com/questions/18773051/how-to-make-os-x-to-read-bash-profil e-not-profile-file, namely, to move all the commands formerly in ~/.profile into ~/.bashrc and then to create ~/.bash_profile consisting of lines:

if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then

source ~/.bashrc

fi

(And of course delete ~/.profile).

That does now allow my alias commands (formerly in ~/.profile and now in ~/.bashrc) to work in Terminal.

However, now executing in Terminal echo $PATH gives my entire path (as defined in ~/.bashrc) twice...

So something is still wrong!

I think I may understand why I'm seeing PATH entries duplicated when I execute

echo $PATH

At login, OS X reads in ~/.bash_profile and hence ~/.bashrc (which establishes all my path settings there). Then when I open Terminal, it reads all those path settings again, which get appended to my settings already made.

In fact, I think that's why in the first place I put all my settings into ~/.profile rather than into ~/.bash_profile or~/.bashrc. And that used to work, including for the aliases set in ~/.profile. And so there's still no explanation I see for why the aliases stopped working!

Perhaps I shouldn't worry about the duplicated entries in PATH??

But still something else is wrong: if in Terminal I execute

exit

then I just get back an echo of that at a new prompt, and only typing and executing exit at the next prompt will actually produce the expected

logout

[Process completed]

What used to work just fine stopped working!

Frank Caggiano wrote:

If you enter alias in the terminal, what shows? How are the alias'a displayed?

Now that I moved all the alias settings into ~/.bashrc, they all show, as follows:

alias apache2ctl='sudo /opt/local/apache2/bin/apachectl'

alias apacherestart='sudo /opt/local/apache2/bin/apachectl restart'

alias apachestart='sudo /opt/local/apache2/bin/apachectl -k start'

alias apachestop='sudo /opt/local/apache2/bin/apachectl -k stop'

alias mysqladmin='/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysqladmin'

alias mysqlclient='/usr/local/mysql/bin/mysql'

alias mysqlctl='sudo /usr/local/mysql/support-files/mysql.server'

alias mysqlstart='mysqlctl start'

alias mysqlstatus='ps aux | grep mysql | grep -v grep'

alias mysqlstop='mysqlctl stop'

alias tomcat7start='/Library/Tomcat/bin/startup.sh'

alias tomcat7stop='/Library/Tomcat/bin/shutdown.sh'

I'll revert to my original configuration, with them in ~/.profile, and no ~/.bashrc or ~/.bash_profile, and answer this again later.

OK, I'm now back with all my path and alias settings in ~/.profile and with no files ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bashrc. I logged out from OS X and back in. In Terminal, echo $PATH shows that all the path settings from ~/.profile have been made. Yet once again, as at the start, the aliases don't work. Thus (notice the strange echo-back of both "set -x: and, later, "exit", which doesn't produce the expected logout[Process completed]).

$ set -x

+ set -x

$ alias

+ alias

$ mysqlstart

+ mysqlstart

bash: mysqlstart: command not found

$ exit

+ exit

exit

$

But wait, it's even stranger than that! Now, after that exit, if I execute alias I see all my aliases -- and they work!