> ~/.bash_profile > The personal initialization file, executed for login shells > > First, the ~ which might not apply to root. Why do you think that? '~' is just shell shorthand for user's home directory. > Second, it’s a “personal” init file, which also might not pertain to > root. root is just as much a user as anyone else, albeit one with special privileges because they are UID 0. > Going from user to root (su) might not initiate a login shell. I’m > not clear on this. Are you logging in? (i.e. typing the username and password at a login prompt.) If not, then it's not a login shell. > > But, .bash_profile is not loading. > > I have my aliases in another file called /root/.bash_aliases, which > is a duplicate of my /home/myuser/.bash_aliases which is NOW sourced > in my /root/.bashrc so it now works. > > So ya, got it to work, but knowing the cascade of inclusions is > important. root is as important to me as my normal user. > Yes. If you are going to be playing around as root, then you really should know the consequences of what you are doing. When I started using Unix 30mumble years ago, the perceived wisdom was *always* invoke su as /bin/su, those where the days when '.' was frequently in a users path and some nasty user might leave scripts called 'su' lying around waiting for an admin to occidentally execute them. Second, invoke it as '/bin/su -', that way you clean out any user variables and only have the environment you have setup for root. P.