ben eisenbraun writes:

> What was the error?

error was [: 71: Bad substitution

> It works fine for me on:
> GNU bash, version 3.2.17(1)-release (i386-apple-darwin9.0)
> GNU bash, version 3.2.39(1)-release (i486-pc-linux-gnu)

yeah, works fine for me too under bash, just not in .profile
for login.

and matthew gillen writes:
> Probably because ubuntu uses a strict (non-bourne-again)
> 'sh' shell for some things (apparently .profile processing
> is one), but the shell you have for a terminal is 'bash'.

so it would seem.

> Other distros (I know at least redhat-based ones) have sh as
> just a symlink to bash, and don't do the 'strict sh' syntax
> by default even if arg[0] is 'sh' instead of 'bash'.

> So that .profile line might work on some linux systems and
> not others.

i noticed also that the .profile script rejects

  [ $HST == alioth ]

which is accepted by the bash shell.  it wants:

  [ $HST = alioth ]

thanks for your responses.

dan

j. daniel moylan
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