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My printers are not working, I believe as a result of changes I made to my /etc/paths file.

In working with mongoDB, I had to edit the /etc/paths file to include a path for their tutorial: /Users/me/mongodb-macos-x86_64-enterprise-4.4.0/bin I added this line to the top of my /etc/paths file as instructed, like so:

/Users/me/mongodb-macos-x86_64-enterprise-4.4.0/bin
/usr/local/bin
/usr/bin
/bin
/usr/sbin
/sbin

After editing the file, I realized I had somehow deleted the path /usr/local/bin

I re-added that line (ultimately in all versions of the existing /etc/paths files on my system: there are multiple save files). For a while my printers worked if I opened the /etc/paths file in terminal and just saved it again. That's not working now (which makes me wonder if the printers working again had anything to do with my attempts).

/Users/me/Library/Printers shows all my expected installed printers. I tried to add that path to the /etc/paths file but that doesn't fix things either.

I assume my mistakes are obvious to someone who knows more about boot order and how and when /etc/paths is called and how I messed up my computer's knowledge/loading of the printers located in /Users/me/Library/Printers.

But, I can't figure out what files I need to fix and how.

pkamb
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user1895891
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    I don't know if it's relevant, but I'd consider it a bad idea to put per-user locations (like anything under /Users/me) in a system-wide configuration file (like /etc/paths). I think it'd be much better to add them to your per-user shell initialization files (~/.bash_profile, etc). If you do need to add to the system paths list, it's also generally best to put them in separate files under /etc/paths.d/ – Gordon Davisson Sep 11 '20 at 00:34
  • Thank you for the thought here. Definitely helps little by little with my learning. – user1895891 Sep 11 '20 at 01:08

0 Answers0