I thought I understood the basics of bash but this stuff is not working with SUSE. These lines are taken from the file: /etc/profile ------------------------------------------------- # PLEASE DON'T CHANGE /etc/profile. Chances are that your changes will # be lost during the next upgrade. # Use /etc/profile.local for your favourite global aliases, # your VISUAL and EDITOR variables, etc ... # # and now let's look if there is a local profile (for stuff not # defined by SuSE Linux, but your friendly admin) # test -e /etc/profile.local && . /etc/profile.local -------------------------------------------------- These are lines I added to /etc/profile.local as USER root, as instructed by the /etc/profile above - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - alias cls 'clear' alias dir 'ls -alg' -------------------------------------------------- These aliases ARE NOT being set on booting USER /root. Why not? The aliases which are already in /etc/profile are not working either so this file is obviously not being processed. I also want to add some novell netware config commands that are global for ALL users, but the profile scripts are not being run, either by SuSEconfig after editing, nor upon booting. Please tell me what I am missing. thanks, Otto Porter