SOLVED /etc/profile error when logging in

[coursevector]

This is a continuation of my original thread here: /etc/profile error when logging in

My last question to @cPanelLauren was:
" Is there a way to reset it? I have a script i run on the servers but it only updates /etc/environment to get rid of warnings from Perl for locale issues. "

I checked my servers recently and found that the majority of the servers have a /etc/profile file size in the kilobytes. But i have a couple where it is 2-5Mb of mostly empty space. Again, no idea the cause. Is there a way to reset it though?

 

[kodeslogic]

It seems something has gone wrong with your /etc/profile file you can hire a certified SafeAdmin from System Administration Services to fix your problem.

 

[coursevector]

I see you are first on the list of the service list, which I'm sure is the reason you suggested it. I'll await a response from cPanel, thanks!

 

[andrew.n]

It's random, sometimes I'm the first one :D so for the issue have you tried to copy the default /etc/profile from one of your other servers with the same OS version?

 

[cPRex]

I'm not finding a good way to restore that file on the system. That file is controlled by the "setup" package on the machine, which we can see here on a test server running CentOS 7:

# rpm -qf /etc/profile
setup-2.8.71-11.el7.noarch

Reinstalling that package does replace the file, but doesn't include the cPanel code we add to it. I ran "yum reinstall setup-2.8.71-11.el7.noarch" and got this output when comparing the new and the original:



Pulling this from another cPanel server may be the best way to resolve that.

 

[coursevector]

Understood, and looks like something I can do. I downloaded the profile files from the 3 servers having issues. Two of them seems to just have a LOT of blank lines inserted in it. By a lot, i mean, one had 1.5m blank lines in it. But when I removed all the blank lines and compared it to the normal file, they were exactly the same. So for those two I'll just replace it out-right sans the extra blank lines. The third had a lot of blank lines AND had a few lines missing and probably where the error was coming from.

pathmunge () {
    case ":${PATH}:" in
        *:"$1":*)
            ;;
# ---------- START MISSING
        *)
            if [ "$2" = "after" ] ; then
                PATH=$PATH:$1
            else
                PATH=$1:$PATH
            fi
    esac
}

if [ -x /usr/bin/id ]; then
    if [ -z "$EUID" ]; then
        # ksh workaround
        EUID=`/usr/bin/id -u`
# ---------- END MISSING
        UID=`/usr/bin/id -ru`
    fi
    USER="`/usr/bin/id -un`"
    LOGNAME=$USER
    MAIL="/var/spool/mail/$USER"
fi

It was also missing "#cPanel Added Limit Protections" which is at the end of the file on the clean version. Where does that come from?

 

[cPRex]

The extra cPanel lines get created when cPanel is installed on the machine, as this package and file both exist as part of the operating system before cPanel is installed.

 

[coursevector]

Thanks @cPRex, i replaced the remaining file with a clean version and that resolved the issue. Although when I went to check I found something curious which I suspect may have been the cause of the issue. Please see below:

[[email protected] etc]# ls -lah | grep profile
-rw-r--r--.   1 root       root       3.2K Nov  3 10:21 profile
drwxr-xr-x.   2 root       root       4.0K Apr 28  2020 profile.d
-rw-r--r--.   2 root       root         36 Jul  3 11:39 profile.lock
-rw-r--r--.   2 root       root         36 Jul  3 11:39 profile.lock-141197dbba22-e6ba5fff-148e
-rw-r--r--.   1 root       root         35 Jan 10  2020 profile.lock-e9adaf7a4e9b-1dcdd770f-8ff
-rw-r--r--.   1 root       root       5.9M Nov  3 10:22 profile.original

It looks like during some sort of update, the file was locked and prevented it from being updated properly. Would you agree? Do you think it's ok to delete those .lock files?

 

[cPRex]

That's my understanding as well - whenever something is open/being read/edited you'll get those .lock files. Since you just adjusted the file manually now those are safe to remove.

 

[coursevector]

Excellent, thanks for the confirmation. I think it's all good now!

 

[cPRex]

I'm glad it all worked out!