Shell – How to permanently remove an Alias from the Shell

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When I was not near my computer some guy got it and set an Alias for ls in my root folder. He set it to 'yes NeverGonnaGiveYouUp'. So now when im in my root folder and type ls I get an infinite loop of NeverGonnaGiveYouUp. It's driving me nuts and I don't know how to get rid of it.

I've already tried unalias and unalias -a but those just remove it temporarily. Once I close the shell and reopen it it comes back. How do I get rid of this crap?

Best Answer

If unalias removes the issue (even temporarily) we have confirmation it is an alias. It could be "brute forced" out by adding an unalias ls in ~/.bashrc.

echo "unalias ls" >> ~/.bashrc

That will get excuted every time bashrc is read and will remove the alias.
That will buy you some peace but will not resolve the actual issue that some file is still containing code to re-start the alias. You need to find which file contains the problem.

If using bash:

grep "NeverGonnaGiveYouUp" /etc/profile /etc/bash.bashrc \
      ~/.bashrc ~/.bash_profile ~/.profile \
      /root/.bashrc /root/.bash_profile /root/.profile

That's a good list of possible files that got the definition. If nothing shows up in that search, or you use some other shell, let us know to further help.

Related Solutions

Bash – How to Remove Alias from Current Session

Supposing that your alias to python is py, do:

$ unalias py

(via)

Bash – Creating an alias to Change Directory and have that directory be the current working directory in new terminal tabs

You have to go another way. Add a line at the end of your .bashrc that changes directory in the last directory the previous bash instance had as CWD (current working directory).

A line like this worked for me:

cd $(readlink  "/proc/$(echo -n $(ps -u $(whoami) -eo stat,pid,cmd | awk '$3 == "'$(which bash)'" && $1 ~ /\+/{print $2}' | sort | head -1))/cwd")

Explanation:

cd $(...): changes directory to whatever is determined below
readlink /proc/$(...)/cwd: reads the link where /proc/pid/cwd points to (current working directory)
echo -n $(...): removes the trailing newline
ps -u $(whoami) -eo stat,pid,cmd: shows my process in a simple format
awk '$3 == "'$(which bash)'" && $1 ~ /\+/{print $2}' if it's a bash and bash is in the foreground process group (indicated by the + in the stat field), then print the pid
sort | head -1 we want only the lowest pid

Edit:

In your case this might be a better solution:

cd $(readlink /proc/$(pgrep -n meteor)/cwd)

It determines the pid of the newest instance of meteor and changes to this current working directory.

Best Answer

Related Solutions

Bash – How to Remove Alias from Current Session

Bash – Creating an alias to Change Directory and have that directory be the current working directory in new terminal tabs

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