How are environment variables defined in a Gnome terminal session? Post: 303009873

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Top Forums UNIX for Beginners Questions & Answers How are environment variables defined in a Gnome terminal session? Post 303009873 by bodisha on Thursday 21st of December 2017 11:37:22 AM

12-21-2017

Registered User

First... thanks for the reply! I hope I can ask for your patience as I try to understand this

I've done quite a bit of reading to try and understand this.... The documentation I had read said that the Bash login scripts (/etc/profile, ~/.bash_profile, ~/.profile, etc) wouldn't get sourced/executed in an interactive non-login shell mode (i.e. Gnome terminal)... and this specific shell mode would only read the /etc/bashrc and the ~/.bashrc scripts.

This had me slightly confused on how a Gnome terminal might go about getting environment variables that would be required to make programs work correctly in an interactive login shell mode (i.e. SSH, Telnet, etc). So I started playing with it.

Like I said, I discovered, if I defined variables simply as local variables (without the 'export' command) in the login scripts they would not be displayed in the output of set/printenv commands.... Which is how the documentation said it would behave

But by playing with things, I discovered if I exported the variable in the Bash login scripts, they were appearing in the output of the set/printenv commands. Initially I thought they were being exported as a global variable from an SSH (putty) sessions

So I did a reboot, and logged in directly to Gnome (Multiple times), to make sure I wasn't accidentally exporting a global variable by a SSH session.

To try and figure this out... I started poking around Gnome and found the /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc-common file sources the $HOME/.profile script. But this hardly explains the exported variables from the other login scripts... So I'm left pretty baffled on why documentation is saying one thing... But what I'm see Centos & Gnome do is something totally different

Anyway... once again thank you for your reply... If you could help me understand this I would be extremely grateful!!!

bodisha

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LEARN ABOUT OSF1

environ

environ(5)							File Formats Manual							environ(5)

NAME

       environ - User environment

SYNOPSIS

       extern char **environ;

DESCRIPTION

       An  array  of strings called the environment is made available by the execve() function when a process begins.  By convention these strings
       have the form name=value. The following names are used by various commands: A startup list of commands read by ex, edit, and vi.  A  user's
       login  directory,  set by login from the password file passwd.  The sequence of directories, separated by colons, searched by csh, sh, sys-
       tem, execvp, etc, when looking for an executable file.  PATH is set to :/usr/ucb:/bin:/usr/bin initially by login.  The name of the default
       printer	to  be	used  by lpr, lpq, and lprm.  The full pathname of the user's login shell.  The kind of terminal for which output is to be
       prepared. This information is used by commands, such as nroff which may exploit special terminal capabilities.  The string  describing  the
       terminal in the TERM environment variable, or, if it begins with a / (slash), the name of the termcap file. See TERMPATH below.	A sequence
       of pathnames of termcap files, separated by colons or spaces, which are searched for terminal descriptions in the order listed.	Having	no
       TERMPATH  is  equivalent to a TERMPATH of $HOME/.termcap:/etc/termcap.  TERMPATH is ignored if TERMCAP contains a full pathname.  The login
       name of the user.

       Further names may be placed in the environment by the export command and name=value arguments in sh, or by the setenv command  if  you  use
       csh. It is unwise to change certain sh variables that are frequently exported by files, such as MAIL, PS1, PS2, and IFS.

SEE ALSO

       Functions: exec(2), system(3)

       Commands: csh(1), ex(1), login(1), sh(1)

																	environ(5)

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