Re: Setting Path ENV variable

[Ethan Benson <erbenson@alaska.net>]

On 7/12/99 ktb wrote:

> I'm by no means an expert on this but I've found that /etc/profile
> effects my console sessions and not my 'X' sessions.

this is because xdm is broken and does not load any environment, even 
your .profile or .bash_profile.

you have to force it by adding:

set -a ## this might be wrong something like this is needed to get 
/etc/environment to stick
source /etc/profile
source /etc/environment
source ~/.bash_profile

to your .xsession

either that or fix the global Xsession scripts to load the 
environment properly.  redhat uses #! /bin/bash -login (bash 1 need 
--login for bash 2) but that does not work with bash 2 i saw a bug 
against bash 2 for that but have not checked to see if its fixed or 
not.  the --login should make it load the environment like it would 
if you logged in on the console.

your MAIL variable is never set with xdm either, bad bad bad.

Ethan