Today I noticed that my path has an entry No such file or directory at the end, which causing other problems.

My path looks like this: /home/geneorama/gems/bin:/home/geneorama/anaconda3/bin:/home/geneorama/.local/bin:/home/geneorama/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/snap/bin: No such file or directory

I can't figure out what's adding it, and would like to know how to troubleshoot it.

I checked .bashrc and didn't notice any problems. The .bashrc adds anaconda and Ruby as expected.

Based on this great answer on how the PATH is set, I checked my ~/.profile file. The profile script just runs .bashrc, and adds $HOME/bin and $HOME/.local/bin to the path. Those paths are only added if they exist, and they do.

I read what I could understand of man login. This led me to check /etc/login.defs, but that looked very vanilla. I don't have any of the other files mentioned in the login help.

Any ideas how to troubleshoot where this is happening?

EDIT: Jan 11, 2021

Based on the comments I edited the question to say that I had checked ~.profile.

I also made a very simple version of ~.bashrc, rebooted, and ran bash with the debug commands. The PATH is still corrupted.

geneorama@computer:~$ bash -x ~/.bashrc

+ HISTCONTROL=ignoreboth

+ shopt -s histappend

+ HISTSIZE=9999999

+ HISTFILESIZE=999999999

+ shopt -s checkwinsize

geneorama@computer:~$ $PATH

bash: /home/geneorama/.local/bin:/home/geneorama/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/snap/bin: No such file or directory

EDIT: Jan 11, 2021 (second edit today)

I also noticed that I can't fix the error by manually setting the path or by logging in as root. I tried using export and setting the path using a quoted string (I don't know if it matters or the best way).

geneorama@computer:~$ $PATH

bash: /home/geneorama/gems/bin:/home/geneorama/anaconda3/bin:/home/geneorama/.local/bin:/home/geneorama/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/snap/bin: No such file or directory

geneorama@computer:~$ PATH="/home/geneorama/gems/bin:/home/geneorama/anaconda3/bin:/home/geneorama/.local/bin:/home/geneorama/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin"

geneorama@computer:~$ $PATH

bash: /home/geneorama/gems/bin:/home/geneorama/anaconda3/bin:/home/geneorama/.local/bin:/home/geneorama/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin: No such file or directory

geneorama@computer:~$ sudo su -

[sudo] password for geneorama: 

root@ativ4-v18:~# $PATH

-bash: /usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/snap/bin: No such file or directory

root@ativ4-v18:~# logout

geneorama@computer:~$ export PATH=/home/geneorama/gems/bin:/home/geneorama/anaconda3/bin:/home/geneorama/.local/bin:/home/geneorama/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin

geneorama@computer:~$ $PATH

bash: /home/geneorama/gems/bin:/home/geneorama/anaconda3/bin:/home/geneorama/.local/bin:/home/geneorama/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin: No such file or directory

Also looked in /etc/environment/ and /etc/environment.d/. The first was empty and the second had two files 90atk-adaptor.conf and 90qt-a11y.conf, but they do not seem to be affecting the path.

EDIT: Jan 11, 2021 (third edit today)

Even when I manually set my path to be just /sbin and /bin I get the error. At this point I don't understand if the error message is actually on my path or printing along with the path.

geneorama@computer:~$ export PATH=/sbin:/bin

geneorama@computer:~$ $PATH

bash: /sbin:/bin: No such file or directory

EDIT: Jan 12, 2021

Originally I was getting an error in Jekyll. Some sites said that my error was caused by spaces in $PATH. When I (improperly) printed my $PATH I thought that something was trying to add a path that I had deleted. I thought that I had uninstalled something improperly.

The spaces being printed were part of an error message, not part of the $PATH.

Apparently Jekyll was corrupted, and the solution was to apt remove it and then reinstall it.

Along the way I learned that the path variable is modified in many non-obvious ways. The answer to my question was essentially "print your $PATH correctly".

One day someone may ask "how to I debug / profile edits to my $PATH?", and someone may mark it as a duplicate. It's not a duplicate of this question. This question turned out to be "how do I print $PATH".