Re: Re: .bash_profile problems under gnome

["Adam Siepel" <acs@soe.ucsc.edu>]

> Most importantly you are not starting up a window manager there!?
> Which is the whole point of the ~/.xsession file.  You may find
> reading through the default startup scripts /etc/X11/Xsession* useful
> to understand this process.  The very last line is 'exec $STARTUP'.
> The 'exec' overlays and replaces the current process with the new
> one.  That new process will inherit the environment of the parent
> process.

okay, got it.  Turned out I was completely looking in the wrong place.
Gnome was starting via /etc/X11/gdm/Sessions/Gnome, not via
/etc/X11/Xsession and related files.  ~/.xsession is not used in this case,
just ~/.gnomerc.  And ~/.gnomerc is sourced, not executed, so you can't add
a #!/bin/bash --login there.  I just decided to make
/etc/X11/gdm/Sessions/Gnome run as #!/bin/bash --login rather than
#!/bin/sh.  That did the trick.

Thanks to all for advice.  I really do hope debian comes up with a better
system here.  Very confusing.  Looks like RedHat uses #!/bin/bash (no
--login) in Xsession and in the gdm GNOME and KDE startup files.  I wonder
if the problem still exists there, since they don't use --login (?)