Issue

This Content is from ask ubuntu. Question asked by Alex

I have installed nvm and it was appended to my /home/www-data/.bashrc

Calling nvm works.

bash
nvm

works

but

$ bash -c nvm
bash: nvm: command not found

does not work.

same when I specific the rcfile

$ bash  --rcfile /home/www-data/.bashrc -c "nvm"
bash: nvm: command not found

Why is that?

In the end-result I want to use nvm in RoboFile exec() command and tried to wrap it into bash -c because nvm is a bash function and not a real script.

Solution

When invoked with -c, bash runs as a non-interactive shell. The default interactive shell startup files (/etc/bash.bashrc, ~/.bashrc) are not read. Even if you force ~/.bashrc to be read, its body is likely not executed – the default Ubuntu one (copied from /etc/skel during account creation) for example includes the lines

# If not running interactively, don't do anything
case $- in
    *i*) ;;
      *) return;;
esac

which bypasses everything following.

You could force an interactive shell using bash -ic, however that may cause other issues depending on what else is in your .bashrc.

Answered by steeldriver

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