Problem with bash login.

[Steven W. Orr]

On Friday, Jul 14th 2006 at 13:35 -0400, quoth Ben Scott:

=>On 7/14/06, Steven W. Orr <steveo at syslang.net> wrote:
=>> I used to view myself as one of the top authorities on bash issues.
=>
=> This isn't really a bash issue, per se...
=>
=>> How in the Wide Wide World Of Sports do I get my .bash_profile to execute
=>> when I log in using gdm.
=>
=> Do you mean for shell's started in an xterm, or for *all* programs
=>that get run from X (assuming there is a difference for you)?
=>
=> Shell's started in an xterm are non-login shells by default.  That
=>means .bashrc is run, but .bash_profile is not.  There's a couple ways
=>to address this.  One is to add the "-ls" (I think that's it, check
=>the man page) switch to xterm, which asks for a login shell.  Another
=>approach is to put everything you want in one file, and have both
=>.bashrc and .bash_profile source that file.  (Or have one of them
=>source the other.)
=>
=> Now, maybe you want *all* X programs to get your .bash_profile
=>environment.    That's probabbly the Right Thing anyway.  Now, until
=>you start an xterm, there's nominally not going to be a bash instance
=>running at all.  Having gdm fire off a shell isn't going to do
=>anything useful, because nothing else will inherit the environment
=>from that shell.
=>
=> What you need to do is put whatever environment you want in your
=>.xinitrc/.Xclients/.Xsession/whatever file.  Or, more likely, put it
=>all in a separate file, and source that from both .bash_profile and
=>.xwhatever.  The .xwhatever file is what gdm runs when you login.
=>It's job is to start your window manager (or session manager, or
=>desktop environment, or whatever).  It is often a shell script itself.
=>
=> If you don't have an .xwhatever file, look under the /etc/X11/ tree
=>to find the system's version of it, copy that to your home directory,
=>and modify.
=>
=> Hope this helps,


This is really frustrating. I want to log into a linux box which is 
running gdm such that after I have logged in, any app that I start will be 
running in the environment that is normally established in my 
.bash_profile. I do not set environment variables in the .bashrc because 
they're not supposed to be set there. I do not want every xterm that I 
start to have to be its own login process. If I was to go and set a 
symlink from .bash_profile to .xsession it would be the same thing as 
creating a shell script that did a cd followed by an exit. I want the 
entire session to have my environment established so that when I try to 
run things they will be running in the environment that I define. The 
description below explains why linking .xsession to .bash_profile is a 
waste of time.

   allow-user-xsession
     If users have an executable file called .Xsession in their home
     directories,  it  can  be  used as the startup program for the X
     session (see Xsession(5)).  If the file is present but not  exe-
     cutable,  it  may  still  be used, but is assumed to be a Bourne
     shell script, and executed with sh(1).


People must have done this in the past.


-- 
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steveo at syslang.net