Why doesn't my X terminal use .profile?

On 2004-08-05, John N. Alegre <info RemoveThis @andante.mn.org> wrote:
 > I have a .profile in my home directory that sets some env vars and some
 > aliases. Terminal app reads this just fine. However, the terminal
 > window I get when I launch X11 does not.

Is this a repeat? Wasn't there just a thread about this? ~/.profile
is only read by login shells. By default xterms do not run login
shells. As a result they use ~/.bashrc, not ~/.profile. Terminal, by
contrast, _is_ set up to run login shells by default. So they use
~/.profile.


 > Can I get a clue?

Either set up your .Xresources so that xterm always runs a login
shell, or re-jigger your startup scripts so that both kinds of
interactive shells run all the initial commands you want. There are
lots of ways to do the latter.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Why doesn't my X terminal use .profile? 

Thanks Lee,

This worked fine. I just did "cp .profile .bashrc" and all is well. It
is odd that these two programs both use the bash shell and behave different.

Lee Phillips wrote:

 > On Thu, 05 Aug 2004 21:40:59 GMT, John N. Alegre <info.TakeThisOut@andante.mn.org> did write:
 >
  >>I have a .profile in my home directory that sets some env vars and some
  >>aliases. Terminal app reads this just fine. However, the terminal
  >>window I get when I launch X11 does not.
 >
 >
 > Try aliasing .bashrc to it. Man bash will fill you in on
 > what startup files are read by interactive shells, noninteractive
 > shells, and a bunch of related stuff that I can never remember.
 > Why x11 and Terminal behave differently I have no idea.
john
--
#############################
# John N. Alegre
# Andante Systems
# St. Paul, Minnesota
#############################<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Why doesn't my X terminal use .profile? 

Even better "ln .profile .bashrc" this way any change to .profile is
used in X11.

 > Thanks Lee,
 >
 > This worked fine. I just did "cp .profile .bashrc" and all is well. It
 > is odd that these two programs both use the bash shell and behave
 > different.
 >
 > Lee Phillips wrote:
 >
  >> On Thu, 05 Aug 2004 21:40:59 GMT, John N. Alegre <info DeleteThis @andante.mn.org>
  >> did write:
  >>
   >>> I have a .profile in my home directory that sets some env vars and
   >>> some aliases. Terminal app reads this just fine. However, the
   >>> terminal window I get when I launch X11 does not.
  >>
  >>
  >>
  >> Try aliasing .bashrc to it. Man bash will fill you in on
  >> what startup files are read by interactive shells, noninteractive
  >> shells, and a bunch of related stuff that I can never remember.
  >> Why x11 and Terminal behave differently I have no idea.
 >
 > john


--
#############################
# John N. Alegre
# Andante Systems
# St. Paul, Minnesota
#############################<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Why doesn't my X terminal use .profile? 

John N. Alegre <info.TakeThisOut@andante.mn.org> wrote:

 > Even better "ln .profile .bashrc" this way any change to .profile is
 > used in X11.

I can't think of an example, but it is conceivable to that you want a
login shell to behave differently from a non-login one.

So just move all initializations from the profile to the rc file. My
profile is just about empty and it's never bothered me.

V.
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email: lastname at cs utk edu
homepage: cs utk edu tilde lastname<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Why doesn't my X terminal use .profile? 

"John N. Alegre" <info RemoveThis @andante.mn.org> wrote in message news:<95388bb88527748671e07baaf8b82f23 RemoveThis @news.meganetnews.com>...
 > I have a .profile in my home directory that sets some env vars and some
 > aliases. Terminal app reads this just fine. However, the terminal
 > window I get when I launch X11 does not.
 >
 > Can I get a clue?


If you launch xterm with the -ls option, the xterm will be a
login shell and will use your .profile.

From man xterm

-ls This option indicates that the shell that is started in the
  xterm window will be a login shell (i.e., the first character
  of argv[0] will be a dash, indicating to the shell that it
  should read the user's .login or .profile).

In the x11 Applications menu -> Customize, edit the terminal item to read

xterm -ls

You can also put this into your ~/.xinitrc. My ~/.xinitrc looks
like this:

source /sw/bin/init.sh
xterm -ls -sb -sl 2000 -rightbar -fn 6x13 &
exec quartz-wm

--
-Bo Parker

The email address in the header is fake.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Why doesn't my X terminal use .profile? 

On 2004-08-06, sn00ge <sn00ge RemoveThis @hotmail.com> wrote:
 > If you launch xterm with the -ls option, the xterm will be a
 > login shell and will use your .profile.

If you really want every xterm to run a login shell, put

xterm*loginShell: true

in ~/.Xresources.


Personally I think running login shells all the time is silly. In
fact I pretty much never run a login shell except when I'm actually
logging in (through ssh). If bash were my preferred shell I'd put
everything in ~/.bashrc and have one line in ~/.profile:

.. ~/.bashrc


Since I prefer tcsh, I put everything in ~/.cshrc and I'm done.<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->
 >> Stay informed about: Why doesn't my X terminal use .profile?