CLASSPATH variables not showing up for root user in CentOS 6.6

Question

I am running CentOS 6.6 on VmWare Player. I have added path

export CLASSPATH=$CLASSPATH:<path/to/jars>

of the required jar files to .bash_profile which resides in my home folder.

Also on executing the following command:

gvanjoic@localhost$ echo $CLASSPATH

It displays the classpath as expected. But, there are some tasks that I need to run as root user. So on running the following commands, the output is not as expected.

gvanjoic@localhost: su
Password:
root@localhost gvanjoic$ echo $CLASSPATH

Output

.

Consequently, I can't execute the tasks. What am I possibly doing wrong here. Help appreciated.

FYI, gvanjoic is not in sudoers list.

Answer 1

The .bashrc in your homefolder is only executed for your user.

Thus when logging in as root, it's not being executed, and root gets a "clean" shell. You probably want to put these lines into /etc/profile if they're valid for the whole system, and not just for your user.

Answer 2

Also try "su -" as the "-" indicates that when you change users, .bashrc should be exported

from "man su"

   -, -l, --login
       Provide an environment similar to what the user would expect had the user logged in directly.

       When - is used, it must be specified as the last su option. The other forms (-l and --login) do not have this
       restriction.