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I'm working on a bash script that appends to /etc/profile, but instead of appending, I accidentally wrote over it, losing all of its content.

How can I restore the file? Is there a system default profile that I can copy to restore my /etc/profile?

I did search here but being new to Ubuntu, I don't know if the posted /etc/profile content I see in other questions is the default content.

BeastOfCaerbannog
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Alex
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    grep /etc/profile /var/lib/dpkg/info/*.postinst shows /var/lib/dpkg/info/base-files.postinst, which in turn has a function copying profile from /usr/share/base-files to /etc/passwd (among other such files). – muru Mar 20 '18 at 08:30
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    Testing a script on your own OS, as root is not a good idea. You should use a VM (so you can just take a snapshot, and if anything goes wrong you just restore the snapshot), or at the very least backup your files before running it. – Bakuriu Mar 20 '18 at 18:20
  • Why was this reopened? The duplicate covers cases where a copy of the original config file exists elsewhere on disk. – muru Nov 06 '23 at 07:58

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There is a copy of the system default profile in /usr/share/base-files

stumblebee
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