I have seen stuff like that also. When you first boot and everything works, echo $PATH as others have already advised and save that to somefile as in echo $PATH >somefile. Then when things go to pot, echo $PATH >someotherfile. Also, do the following: pwd >mydir. In this case, the file mydir will contain your absolute path. Then things go bust. Try pwd again and see what happens. You might have something going that does a chroot which is a great command but very powerful. If it occurs for the wrong reasons, you may have been put in to an environment that can't reach all your normal executables. You still will have to figure out what caused this and how to fix it, but that's what makes unix good. You have grownup power tools to fix things with. Just as a table saw will cut off fingers as easily as it cuts wood, it's been said that unix can give you some of the prettiest rope you ever hanged yourself with so go cautiously. At least your boot starts out working so whatever happens isn't a permanent change. Martin McCormick Linux for blind general discussion <blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx> writes: your execution path and causes everything to stop working. If you run something that uses a command like chroot, you can get pure weirdness because chroot makes it impossible to search outside your current directory > On Mon, 4 Feb 2019, Linux for blind general discussion wrote: > > > I'm having strange behaviour on fresh install of Debian 9 > After I login and work for a while then any command on bash terminal > is > missing with message such as the following > bash: ls command not found > > > You're not bumping the capslock by any chance? > > If not, run: > > echo $PATH > > (note PATH in all capitals) > > > to make sure that your search path hasn't changed. It should include /usr/ > bin and /bin and ideally /usr/local/bin. Root should also have /usr/sbin > and /sbin. > > > HTH, > Geoff. > > _______________________________________________ > Blinux-list mailing list > Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx > https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list > > _______________________________________________ Blinux-list mailing list Blinux-list@xxxxxxxxxx https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/blinux-list