Question: linux home directory

[Scoofy12]

a quick question for the linux gurus:

is your home directory (i.e. what ~ gets expanded to, and where programs place your dotfiles) completely determined by the value of $HOME ?

Here's what im trying to do: All the linux/unix machines at school have a common login system, and your home directory gets mapped via nfs each time you login. however, for some machines, I want to use a local disk as my home, to keep settings and such separate from my shared home directory. can i check the machine in .bashrc or something and just export a new $HOME variable? or does it take more?

[Bok]

yes, it's just the value of $HOME.

.bashrc or .bash_profile you can change it.

Bok

[Scoofy12]

thanks, that worked fine

one note, in case anyone else is weird enough to want to do this, is that .Xauthority and .bash_history files appear to get dealt with before .bash_profile (which in my case just executes .bashrc) does. this means i had to make a symlink in the new home directory to .Xauthority in the old home directory for X over ssh to work. but it works great :)