/etc/environment

["Brenda J. Butler" <bjb@achilles.net>]

Talking about 
On Thu, Jan 10, 2002 at 07:06:46PM -0500, Brenda J. Butler wrote:
> Seriously, though, I'd never heard of the /etc/environment file
> so I looked it up with
> 
>     find /etc -type f -exec grep "/etc/environment" {} \; -print
> 
> and the only file returned was /etc/pam.d/login
> 
> So /etc/environment would appear to be a pam artifact.

Well....
I've looked at that From-PowerUp-To-Bash-Prompt-HOWTO (from
linuxdoc) and it doesn't mention /etc/environment.

I've logged out and logged back in from the xdm screen,
and my user shells (in xterms) actually do not have the
/etc/environment variables set.

And I noticed that I have a file /root/.bashrc dated
Dec 17 2000 with export LANG=C at the bottom.
I'm running Debian Potato 2.2R2 for sparc.

I can't remember if I made the change in 2000 or if
the system came that way.  There is no evidence of
a change (ie, another file /root/.bashrc.date lying
around) so perhaps the system came that way.

When I su to root, LANG is set, but not the other
variable I added to /etc/environment.

When I login to bjb from a root shell, both LANG and
another variable that I added to /etc/environment
are set.

I really think it has something to do with login/pam.
But what?  And why doesn't it get run when I log in from
xdm?

Maybe I should run through the /etc/environment file
and export the contents from my .xsession?

-- 
bjb@achilles.net
Welcome to the GNU age!   http://www.gnu.org