xterm problems with man

[Dale Scheetz <dwarf@polaris.net>]

I don't work in an xterm much. The text console keeps me plenty busy ;-)
I was in X windows yesterday and needed to look something up in the man
pages, so I went to the xterm and typed 'man pppd'. What I got was:

	gzip: stdout: No space left on device

So, I switched to a non-X VC and the command worked as expected. I then
went back to the xterm and tried again. This time I got more errors ending
with the same one above. I quickly discovered that I couldn't do much of
anything ... commands not found ... lots broken.

So, it looks like the xterm is missing paths and probably crucial
environment variables as well. (BTW, how can you get the current
list of environment variables from bash? Their contents would be useful
as well.)

Now, I understand that xterms don't run /etc/profile, but do run
.bashrc. There has been some recent discussion about how to "link" the two
for proper opperation. My question is, "Why aren't these issues dealt with
properly from the start?". Shouldn't the user in X get a reasonable set of
default paths and conditions, in the same way that they get them when
logging in from a text terminal?

I have heard hints that the first xterm in an X session doesn't do any of
the init stuff that it should, and that only succeeding instances of an
xterm are properly initialized. For me, starting another xterm doesn't
help. I get the same results.

	


Dwarf
-- 
_-_-_-_-_-_-                                          _-_-_-_-_-_-_-

aka   Dale Scheetz                   Phone:   1 (904) 656-9769
      Flexible Software              11000 McCrackin Road
      e-mail:  dwarf@polaris.net     Tallahassee, FL  32308

_-_-_-_-_-_- If you don't see what you want, just ask _-_-_-_-_-_-_-


--
TO UNSUBSCRIBE FROM THIS MAILING LIST: e-mail the word "unsubscribe" to
debian-devel-request@lists.debian.org . Trouble? 
e-mail to templin@bucknell.edu .