[vox-tech] bash environment variables (and KDE)

[Jonathan Stickel]

Ken Bloom wrote:
> On Fri, Apr 30, 2004 at 10:33:28AM -0700, Jonathan Stickel wrote:
> 
>>There are still a couple things in linux that seem to be unnecessarily 
>>convoluted and really bug me.  One is sound, which I've finally managed 
>>to work around using alsa and dmix.
>>
>>The other is handling user-specified shell environment variables.  I use 
>>bash, and by trial and error I've found I can put what I want in 
>>.bashrc.  IIRC, I remember reading that this really isn't the place for 
>>custom variables, but this is what has worked for me.  Recently, I've 
>>defined $TEXINPUTS, a path variable for tex/latex.  When I run latex 
>>from shell, it uses the path I've defined by $TEXINPUTS correctly. 
>>However, if I start Emacs from KDE's kmenu, $TEXINPUTS is NOT read, and 
>>thus running latex from within Emacs doesn't work like I expect.  It 
>>turns out that KDE, when started through xdm/kdm, does not read .bashrc 
>>at all 
>>(http://lists.debian.org/debian-kde/2002/debian-kde-200209/msg00083.html). 
>> However, .bashrc does get read when starting a shell from within KDE.
>>
>>So my question is:  what really is the correct place to put 
>>user-specific bash variables?  And, how do I make KDE read them when 
>>logging in from kdm?
> 
> 
> Well, I use a .xsession script to log in from kdm (my default session
> is "Custom" which runs my .xsession). My .xsession uses bash as its
> interpreter, which sources .profile, and .profile in turn sources
> .bashrc, so everything defined in these files becomes available before
> my .xsession starts my window manager.
> 

Could you post your Custom session and .xession files, or at least the 
relevant parts?

Jonathan