AMBER Archive (2006)

Subject: RE: AMBER: Installing / Compiling Question

From: Ross Walker (ross_at_rosswalker.co.uk)
Date: Sun May 28 2006 - 00:12:46 CDT

> Try something like this:
>
> export PATH=".:$AMBERHOME/exe:$PATH"
>
> This will add the current directory, plus $AMBERHOME/exe to
> whatever is
> already in your PATH variable. (Try "echo $PATH" before and

If I can chip in a piece of advice here. Adding '.' to your path can be very
dangerous, especially on public / multi-user machines. This is a classic way
to 'hack' a machine. E.g. if I have access to a public nfs directory that
you also mount on your machine I can go into one of these directories and
create a file called, for example, 'ls' then if someone who had '.' in their
path was in this directory and typed ls it would execute my version of ls
instead of the /usr/bin version. Thus I could put all sorts of nasty stuff
in here and then at the end of my script just have it run 'ls $1 $2' then
you as a user would be none the wiser but meanwhile my script will have
installed / edited lots of stuff as if it was your user account.

This can be ultra bad if you were to put '.' in root's path.

You should really only put explicit paths in your PATH variable and then use
full paths for everything else unless you explicitly trust every user and
every filesystem on your machine (including removable media)...

Just my 2c...

All the best
Ross

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