[SOLVED] What PATH does KDE use? It doesn't use mine.

[jlittle]

My PATH is set in /etc/environment to have /usr/local/bin ahead of /usr/bin because I compile my own versions of some apps (not least vim and perl), but KDE doesn't want to know about that.

If I don't put a full path in a kmenu entry, or use the Run Command... from the cashew, /usr/bin executables are found first.

I'd set it in /etc/profile or .profile, but by the time they are run, the setting from /etc/environment has been applied.

I thought that when KDE is started, it would read at least $HOME/.profile, and the PATH would apply from then.

[russlar]

Re: What PATH does KDE use? It doesn't use mine.

what shell are you using? I recommend making either a .bashrc or .cshrc file in your $HOME, if you haven't already.

[toad]

Re: What PATH does KDE use? It doesn't use mine.

Do

echo $PATH

to find out.

[jlittle]

Re: What PATH does KDE use? It doesn't use mine.

what shell are you using? I recommend making either a .bashrc or .cshrc file in your $HOME, if you haven't already.

I use bash. I've instrumented the beginning of /etc/profile, ~/profile, and ~/.bashrc with

echo `date +%T.%N` .profile PS1="'$PS1'" >> $HOME/startup.log
echo $PATH >> $HOME/startup.log

and the result when I log in is:

21:00:53.299731496 /etc/profile PS1=''
/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
21:00:53.303627454 .profile PS1=''
/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games
21:00:53.311548435 .bashrc PS1=''
/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games

so you see that $PATH has indeed been set the way I want, by the time bash is running, so tinkering with bash startup files is not useful.

[toad]

Re: What PATH does KDE use? It doesn't use mine.

I think this will go some way to see you right - taken from here http://www.faqs.org/docs/Linux-mini/Path.html

What it boils down to is kdm (or gdm for that matter) mixing things up.

The most important settings is possible to set in the global shell initialization files for login shells: /etc/csh.login for tcsh and /etc/profile for bash.

Exceptions that do not get the right path from these files are rsh commands, ssh commands, menu items from X window manager that do not explicitly start login shell, commands invoked from inittab, cron jobs, daemons jobs like magic filters started from lprd, WWW CGI scripts, and so on.

If the path is set in /etc/csh.cshrc, the path is right even when rsh or ssh execute command in remote machine with account using tcsh/csh. However, it is not possible to set path if account uses bash/sh.

It is possible to combine path setting to one file, for example to a file /etc/environment-common. There we write:

${EXPORT}PATH${EQ}/bin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/local/bin:/usr/games:.

This can be used from /etc/csh.login (for tcsh and csh)

set EQ=" " set EXPORT="setenv " source /etc/environment-common

And from /etc/profile (for bash, doesn't work for ordinary sh)

EQ='=' EXPORT="export " . /etc/environment-common

And from /etc/environment (for XDM)

EQ="=" EXPORT="export " . /etc/environment-common

This strategy works mostly but ssh will complain of the lines in /etc/environment (and defined environment variables EQ and EXPORT). And still, rsh commands executed with bash won't get this path.

[jlittle]

Re: What PATH does KDE use? It doesn't use mine.

Do

echo $PATH

to find out.

echo $PATH shows the path I want, but if I use the cashew to run the command gvim, /usr/bin/gvim is run, not /usr/local/bin/gvim, which is before /usr/bin/gvim in the path.

Getting bloody minded, I put my echo statements in startkde, and they run after the ~/.profile, and the path is indeed set the way I want. But kde is not using it; I imagine that the run command dialog sends a message to some other process where the path is different, or some other way of starting gvim is used, maybe a cache.

Can anyone shed some light?

[jlittle]

Well, five years later, I had occasion to look at this again, and it has been fixed IMO, in Saucy. There was some chatter on the lists when lightdm was introduced; some people's systems broke because lightdm was replacing the path, with something minimal to suit itself. Anyway,

• the default path is /usr/lib/lightdm/lightdm:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games; note /usr/local/sbin and /usr/local/bin present and ahead of the non-local ones, which was my original problem
• setting the path in /etc/profile now has effect in KDE, as it should

Regards, John Little