Environment variables that you can customize for /etc/profile

TZ

Identifies the time zone used by most of your users. It gives the standard time zone, the number of hours offset from Coordinated Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) – also called Greenwich Mean Time (GMT) – and the daylight saving time zone.

For a system whose users are mostly in New York and Boston, this variable would be:
```
TZ=EST5EDT
```
For a system with most users in Houston, this variable would be:
```
TZ=CST6CDT
```

PATH

Defines the default command path. This variable should name all directories in which the installation plans to put utilities and licensed programs.

If you plan to place all standard utilities in the /bin directory, this variable is:

PATH=/bin

If you want your users to access another product's binaries that was installed into /usr/lpp/xxxxxxxx/bin, the variable becomes:

PATH=/bin:/usr/lpp/xxxxxxxx/bin

The order of the directories in the PATH environment variable controls the search order.

To add the working directory to the search, add a colon and a period (:.) as follows:

PATH=/bin:/usr/lpp/xxxxxxxx/bin:.

To search the working directory first, specify:

PATH=.:/bin:/usr/lpp/xxxxxxxx/bin

FPATH

Contains a list of directories that the z/OS shell searches to find shell functions. The /samples/profile file does not have a default FPATH setting. Add the definition of the FPATH environment variable to point to the directories in /etc/profile that contain the shell function definitions.

Directories in this list are separated by colons. Every directory is searched in the order specified in the list until a matching function definition file is found. If you have shell functions that you want to make available to all users, do the following:

Define a directory that is readable by all users.
Put the shell function definitions in files within this directory.
Add the definition of the FPATH environment variable to /etc/profile. Mark it as an exported variable with the export command.

Example: A function named buildapp is in a file named /usr/lib/appdev/functions/buildapp. Add the following statement to /etc/profile:

export FPATH=/usr/lib/appdev/functions

The user can then just issue buildapp. The first time buildapp is run, it is found in FPATH, defined in the current shell, and executed. After that first time, every time buildapp is issued (within the same shell), the shell executes buildapp without first searching for that function.

FPATH follows the same format as the PATH environment variable.

NLSPATH

Specifies the path that the messaging service will use to find a message catalog.

LANG

Contains the default locale name.

MAIL

Define the name of the system mail file and enables notification of mail. If you plan to use a mail file other than /usr/mail (for example, /usr/notes), set the variable as follows:

MAIL=/usr/notes/$LOGNAME

STEPLIB

Defines libraries that should be searched to load MVS™ load modules. Normally, installations should specify STEPLIB=NONE to prevent the propagation of STEPLIBs. If a STEPLIB environment variable is needed, specify only the required library. For example:

STEPLIB=CEE.SCEERUN:CEE.SCEERUN2

If you do not specify the STEPLIB environment variable, STEPLIBs are propagated from the user's TSO/E user ID. Specifying a value other than STEPLIB=NONE can affect performance for the following reasons:

Each time a fork or exec is invoked, STEPLIB data sets are dynamically allocated for the user.
Each time an MVS load module is loaded, the STEPLIB data set directories are searched.
Each time an MVS load module is found in the STEPLIB concatenation, the module is loaded from there into the user's private area storage.

LOCPATH

Tells the setlocale() function the name of the directory from which to load locale object files. If LOCPATH is not defined, the default directory /usr/lib/nls/locale is searched.

LOCPATH is similar to the PATH environment variable. It contains a list of z/OS UNIX directories separated by colons.

For information about how setlocale() searches for locale object files, see the description of setlocale() in z/OS XL C/C++ Runtime Library Reference.