Drush path settings

Question

I'm fairly new to terminal and very new to Drush - I've installed Drush on my VPS using Composer and when I ssh as root all works fine. However I realise I shouldn't be using root so am trying to set up using another user but keep getting:

env: drush: No such file or directory

I realise this is something to do with the path to drush but cannot work out what I've got wrong. Here are my .bashrc and .bashprofile contents:

ROOT .bashrc:

# .bashrc

# To fix 'stdin is not a tty' error with Drush alias connections
export PATH=$PATH:~/.composer/vendor/drush/drush
[ -z "$PS1" ] && return

# User specific aliases and functions

# Source global definitions
if [ -f /etc/bashrc ]; then
        . /etc/bashrc
fi

ROOT .bash_profile:

# .bash_profile

# Get the aliases and functions
if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
        . ~/.bashrc
fi

# User specific environment and startup programs

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin
PATH="$HOME/.composer/vendor/bin:$PATH"
export PATH

USER .bashrc:

# .bashrc

# To fix 'stdin is not a tty' error with Drush alias connections
export PATH=$PATH:~/.composer/vendor/drush/drush
[ -z "$PS1" ] && return

# Source global definitions
if [ -f /etc/bashrc ]; then
        . /etc/bashrc
fi

# User specific aliases and functions
alias drush='~/.composer/vendor/drush/drush'

USER .bash_profile

# .bash_profile

# Get the aliases and functions
if [ -f ~/.bashrc ]; then
        . ~/.bashrc
fi

# User specific environment and startup programs

PATH=$PATH:$HOME/bin
PATH="$HOME/.composer/vendor/bin:$PATH"
export PATH

I've googled lots of solutions and tried various things so may by now have a bit of a mash up of things in these files!

Answer 1

You installed Drush in ~/.composer/vendor/drush/drush. You could instead use this alternative method.

If you need Drush installed for all users on a system using Composer, install Composer globally then follow the steps below.

Important: Run these shell commands as a privileged user with write access to /opt and /usr/local/bin or prefix with sudo.

# Create and/or navigate to a path for the single Composer Drush install.
mkdir --parents /opt/drush-8.x
cd /opt/drush-8.x
# Initialise a new Composer project that requires Drush.
composer init --require=drush/drush:8.* -n
# Configure the path Composer should use for the Drush vendor binaries.
composer config bin-dir /usr/local/bin
# Install Drush. 
composer install

For Drush 8, the alternative method is described on Install (alternatives) / Install a global Drush via Composer.

Follow the instructions below:

1. Install Composer globally.
2. Install the cgr tool following the instructions in that project.
3. Add Composer's bin directory to the system path by placing export PATH="$HOME/.composer/vendor/bin:$PATH" into your ~/.bash_profile (Mac OS users) or into your ~/.bashrc (Linux users).
4. Install latest stable Drush: cgr drush/drush.

For latest Drush releases, it's recommended to add it as Composer dependency, but not globally.

Answer 2

env: drush: No such file or directory is most likely coming from the line in your .bashrc file pointing to a non-existant file/directory called drush.

Since you say you're new to terminal and drush, here's a little background of what I think is happening: The squiggly line ~ ('Tilde' iirc?) is a shortcut in terminal. It means my home directory. So if your root user's .bashrc contains a directory path starting with tilde, for example ~/.composer/vendor/drush/drush, this is basically pointing to /home/root/.composer/vendor/drush/drush. When the .bashrc file in your user's directory has the exact same line, it points to a different directory, because of the tilde. Yours will be pointing to /home/iain-g/.composer/vendor/drush/drush (hypothetically, if your linux login is iain-g).

You can't simply point to /home/root from your own .bashrc either, since you won't have permission to access the root user's home directory.

So what you need to do is:

• Uninstall the drush you have installed for root user (otherwise you may get issues later on with 2 drushes). This may not be necessary but it's nice to clean up after yourself.
• Install Composer globally. You're most likely safe to go with /usr/local/bin/ as the directory to put the composer file in. But if you're unsure you can type echo $PATH in terminal and you'll see all the directories in your PATH environment variable, you can put composer in almost any of these directories.
• Install Drush For ALL USERS via Composer (see 2nd heading). It's only about 5 commands. And they're written for you. Just copy and paste and execute them line by line.