Re: xdm and user's profiles

[Ethan Benson <erbenson@alaska.net>]

> Not true. I cannot get /etc/environment values to be set when I use xdm to
> log into X. I have not tried via startx, but I presume that will work.

startx will obviously work since it will inherit the entire 
environment that is set for the login shell you are running startx 
from.

> I may have futzed, and gotten the format wrong, if someone would enlighten
> me, I'd be appreciative.

AFAICT xdm (and wdm) simply ignore all forms of setting environment 
variables, I tried getting /etc/environment to load with it, no go, I 
even tried using pam_env.so to get the environment loaded that does 
not work with xdm since xdm still has no support whatsoever for pam. 
but it did not work for wdm either (which does support pam)

from digging though my redhat box's xdm configuration i think they 
got around this by making the first line of the global Xsession 
script:

#! /bin/bash -login

which forces the bash shell executing the Xsession to be  login shell 
and thus load the environment like xdm should be doing.

however, redhat uses bash 1 if you install bash 2 its called 
/bin/bash2.  debian uses bash 2 and does not have bash 1 installed, i 
tried the above adapting it for bash 2:

#! /bin/bash --login

but this did not work, but i noticed a few days ago in discussions 
about bash bugs a little gem about bash not loading the *profile 
files when its called with --login and not attached to a tty, sounds 
exactly why the above don't work.  so whenever that is fixed I will 
try the above again and if that works it seems to be to be a simple 
solution to this problem.

for now i just add the following to my .xsession :

#! /bin/bash

## workaround for broken xdm
source /etc/profile
source /etc/environment
source ~/.bash_profile
export MAIL=/var/spool/mail/$USER
xscreensaver &
wmaker

note above that the $MAIL variable is never defined since that is 
defined by the login program, and since in this case xdm is the login 
program it just does not get set.  (redhat does not depend on the 
login program to set this they just add the above line to 
/etc/profile iirc)



Ethan Benson
To obtain my PGP key: http://www.alaska.net/~erbenson/pgp/