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Accepted
Adrian Buzea
Asked: 2013-11-24 12:56:08 +0800 CST

how to reset ~/.profile to default

  • 772

I have been playing around with the ~/.profile file trying to add something permanently to my $PATH variable and it seems i have done some damage.

I can't log into ubuntu now. When I enter my password the screen goes black for 1 second and then it goes back to the login screen. If I press Ctrl+Alt+F3 I can log in with the command line. My question is how can I edit ~/.profile from the command line so I can log in again ?

.profile

2 Answers

  1. Best Answer

    You can edit the file using

    nano ~/.profile

    To get the default ~/.profile back use

    cp /etc/skel/.profile ~/.profile

    As this will overwrite your modified version you may want to save your version first:

    cp ~/.profile ~/.profile.invalid
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  2. In case you get an error saying:

    cp /etc/skel/.profile: command not found

    try:

    /usr/bin/cp /etc/skel/.profile ~/.profile

    If that doesn't work, try with sudo privileges using:

    /usr/bin/sudo /usr/bin/cp /etc/skel/.profile ~/.profile

    Then reboot

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