Cant execute files from Terminal In /Users/me/bin. Only in /usr/bin

Question

I have about 30 Snow Leopard machines in my Bioinformatics lab with one central box where I distribute programs.
All of our scripts/programs are command line based.
When I SCP a program to the target machine, I drop it in /Users/BioLab/bin/
I am usually never able to execute the file from the Terminal just by typing its filename on the target machine. I can if I move the file to /usr/bin or of I create a symbolic link in that folder I always can.
On random boxes I am able to execute files in /Users/BioLab/bin/ from Terminal. Why is this so inconsistant?
What do I have to do to these machines to run files in /Users/BioLab/bin/ straight from Terminal w/o moving them to /usr/bin?
Thanks!

Answer 1

You modify the PATH environment variable on the systems to include /Users/BioLab/bin/
export PATH="$PATH:/Users/BioLab/bin/"
Your choice are to modify the .bash_profile for every user account on every Mac, or modify the /etc/profile on every Mac, or create a /etc/paths.d/BioLab entry on every Mac (look at one of the existing /etc/paths.d entries as an example).
By the way, Terminal, Unix, and command line command questions are best asked in the Mac OS X Technologies > Unix Forum
<http://discussions.apple.com/forum.jspa?forumID=735>