On Sun, 11 Apr 1999, Brian D Chase wrote:
 > My preferences lean towards keeping things as simple as possible.  I'd
 > probably strip down /.profile making it much less sophisticated than
 > /root/.profile unless there are reasons for keeping the two identical.

Curt Sampson writes:
 > It just seems a lot easier to me to keep the two identical. Users
 > don't won't discover (perhaps the hard way) that they have different
 > paths in single- and mulit-user mode when they change just one,
 > etc.

Why not just get rid of /.profile completely?
If not that, how about a trival one, i.e.:

# slash.profile
# Note: this is used ONLY in single user mode.  (KISS!)
PATH=/sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin
# Don't care about hostname (prolly not set yet)
# Don't need no stinkin functions! (etc. etc.)
PS1='# '
# The END!