Peng Yu wrote: > I'm wondering how to start bash without inheriting any environment > variables and user level profiles (such as .bash_profile). Would you > please let me know what option to use?
At login time only a bare minimum of environment variables exist. It is already almost a minimal set. What would you avoid? There may be a better way. But for me I would place the following in the ~/.bash_profile. The env -i will initialize it to an empty environment and only the explicitly set variables will exist. exec env -i PATH=$PATH HOME=$HOME bash But beware, I did not test this and mistakes in your .bash_profile may prevent bash from starting and thereby preventing you from logging into the system. You could lock yourself out. Always keep a spare login handy in order to fix problems. Bob
