setting PATH for non-interactive ssh sessions

[slaguth]

Hi,

I'm trying to add an ~/bin to my PATH on a remote server running Linux (I don't know exactly what flavor). After reading the bash manual, I modified ~/.bash_profile to add ~/bin to my path.

$ ssh username@server.net
username@server:~$ echo $PATH
/home/username/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games:/custom/sys/sbcl/sbcl/bin

Which works perfectly fine. The problem is that when I try to use darcs push over ssh, it can't find darcs on the remote machine because bash doesn't read ~/.bash_profile for non-interactive logins.

$ ssh username@server.net 'echo $PATH'
/usr/local/bin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/X11R6/bin

I believe it may be possible to affect PATH unconditionally for all logins, but all the methods I am aware of require modifying a system file like /etc/..., none of which I have write access for (and even if I did, wouldn't want to change).

I've also heard that ssh can be configured with a custom path by modifying ~/.ssh/environment, but I believe this requires setting "PermitUserEnvironment yes" in /etc/ssh/sshd_config, which I also don't have access to.

Are there any other ways to configure a user-specific PATH for non-interactive ssh sessions? Or do I need to go to system admins with this problem?

Thanks in advance.

[bingoUV]

Maybe you already know these things, but

1. You do not necessarily need the PATH variable. You could call your program by giving the full path : ~/bin/programname

2. You could call a particular program with a modified env. Try

ssh username@server.net 'export PATH=/home/username/bin:"$PATH" ; echo $PATH'

[slaguth]

Thanks for the response.

Unfortunately, according to the manual entry for darcs push, "the command invoked via ssh is always darcs, i.e. the darcs executable must be in the default path on the remote machine."

So I guess my question is what options are (theoretically) available for changing the PATH for non-interactive logins via ssh? As I mentioned before, I may not have the necessary access to try some methods, but I would still be open to any suggestions.

If there aren't any other options, I should probably redirect the question to the darcs community... I just thought I could be forgetting something.

Thanks again.