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I have an embedded platform running an Arago linux distribution. Right now the only "user" is root but there will eventually be others, but I don't know how many or what user IDs they will have.

Every user of this system must have a particular environment variable exported in order for the GUI to work correctly. I found that if I created and then added the export command to /home/root/.profile it is set correctly for root.

Where should I place the command such that it is exported for every (current and future) user of the system?

Note: On my system, at start up there were no files present in /home/root, I added .bash_profile but that didn't work, then I added .profile and that did work. I thought I might have a dash shell because of that, but when I check /bin/sh it points to bash... so I tagged both.

Mike
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    /etc/bashrc or /etc/profile.d/... – Eddy_Em Feb 13 '14 at 19:57
  • @Eddy_Em - Thanks.. so /etc/bashrc doesn't exist, but /etc/profile.d/ does. There's a couple of shell scripts in there. I take it I just add another one that does an export and that will be autorun? – Mike Feb 13 '14 at 19:59
  • This isn't an unambiguous way: user can delete needed lines from his ~/.bashrc. But you can replace bash by a script that will run bash with needed environment. – Eddy_Em Feb 13 '14 at 20:11
  • possible duplicate of Alternative to .bashrc – terdon Feb 14 '14 at 15:00
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    @terdon - That's not a duplicate. That Question is how to get commands run for a specific user, which is why the Q and A's are all talking about ~/.profile, that doesn't solve my problem because I need this command done for *all current and future users*, which is why it needed to be done in the /etc/profile.d/ area – Mike Feb 14 '14 at 15:05
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    possible duplicate of Permanent Environment Variable for all users – Braiam Feb 14 '14 at 15:24
  • I can't vote to close my question as a duplicate, but @Braiam that one looks right to me. This should be closed as a dup of that one, thanks for finding it. I figured someone would have asked the same but I didn't locate it in my searching. – Mike Feb 14 '14 at 16:12
  • You can VTC your own question. Just press the "close" button... wait, you don't have 1k rep :( – Braiam Feb 14 '14 at 16:14

1 Answers1

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Just put the code in a new file in /etc/profile.d/ and check that /etc/profile has some code that executes every script in that directory.

My /etc/profile has:

if [ -d /etc/profile.d ]; then
  for i in /etc/profile.d/*.sh; do
    if [ -r $i ]; then
      . $i
    fi
  done
  unset i
fi

which means the script needs to have a .sh extension

Anthon
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  • No, just replace for i in /etc/profile.d/*.sh with for i in /etc/profile.d/*. But it will try to run also scripts for other shells (like csh or zsh). – Eddy_Em Feb 13 '14 at 20:08
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    @Eddy_Em if the OP has a script which has *.sh, touching that script is not a good idea. On the next update of /etc/profile it will get overwritten with one that uses that pattern again, and his script mysteriously would not work anymore. – Anthon Feb 13 '14 at 20:12
  • Why not simply use /etc/profile itself? Why is it better to create a new file in profile.d and source it? – terdon Feb 14 '14 at 14:38
  • @terdon as I indicated in my previous comment to Eddy_Em /etc/profile might be overwritten with some system upgrade, depending on how it got on your computer in the first place. A new script in /etc/profile.d/is less likely to be overwritten. This is not theoretical, I have had that happen with SuSE Linux, although I am not sure if it was /etc/profile or some other file in /etc (that was in, or before, 2000). – Anthon Feb 14 '14 at 14:51
  • OK, so you're assuming that profile always sources the files in profile.d (which seems to be a very reasonable assumption). However, if you need to make changes in profile in order to source profile.d the same argument about being overwritten by a new version stands. – terdon Feb 14 '14 at 14:59
  • @terdon I assume that it (or something similar) is already there, that is why I indicated to check, not to add the code. Once a distro does that (e.g. Ubuntu at least since 8.04), they are likely to leave it in for future updates. – Anthon Feb 14 '14 at 15:22