According to author:
How do I make an entry to the Red Hat 7.1 system wide PATH ? I've looked up /etc/profile and it doesn't look like something that should be edited. Besides, I can't see a typical PATH line to edit. So I took a look at /root/.bash_profile and it looks more like what I'm used to. But that's only good for loggin in root and I don't always do that. I'm used to Slackware where all you have to do is edit the /etc/profile file to add a program to the system wide PATH. What do I have to do in Red Hat 7.1 to add something like /usr/local/Slab/effects to the PATH ? And what file records the PATH? Any hints would be appreciated.
Under Red Hat systems, /etc/profile is indeed the place to change it.
You'll note constructs such as this at the start of the file...
if ! echo $PATH | /bin/grep -q "/usr/X11R6/bin" ; then PATH="$PATH:/usr/X11R6/bin" fi
These are done to add the path component only if it's not already there, to avoid duplication, and to avoid simply clobbering the existing components in the path. Just mimic that construct for any additional directories you want to add.
Note that this file (/etc/profile) will be used by any user (including root) that has a Bourne shell (including bash) as their login shell. You might also want to do something similar for csh (and tcsh) users, by adding something equivalent (with appropriate syntax for that shell) to the /etc/csh.cshrc and/or /etc/csh.login files, if you have any users of those shells.