Feature Request: Provide a single configuration file for user settings

Thank you for taking the time to report this issue and helping to make Ubuntu better. Examining the information you have given us, this does not appear to be a bug report so we are closing it. We appreciate the difficulties you are facing, but it would make more sense to raise problems you are having in the support tracker at https://answers.launchpad.net/ubuntu if you are uncertain if they are bugs.

You may find informations about your particular problem at https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EnvironmentVariables

Thanks.

Thank you for taking the time to answer this issue. Examining the answer you have given me, this does not appear to resolve the issue, though...

I assume you refer to the following in https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EnvironmentVariables:

"In order to set environment variables in a way that effects a user's entire desktop session, one may place commands to set their values in one of the "hidden" script files in the user's home directory. The more common such files are outlined below.

      ~/.profile - This is probably the best file for placing environment variable assignments in, since it gets executed automatically by the DisplayManager during the startup process desktop session as well as by the login shell when one logs-in from the textual console. "

This would indeed resolve this issue, if only it were true. gdm does not, in fact, execute ~/.profile.

Since this differs from expected and documented behaviour, I am reopening this bug and assigning it to gdm.

Thanks.

Setting back to incomplete due to your last comment.

Indeed, $HOME/.profile and /etc/profile are what you're looking for.

These files are sourced from /etc/gdm/Xsession (.gnomerc has been deprecated a while ago) and read by your login shell. (From sh man page "A login shell first reads commands from the files /etc/profile and .profile if they exist.") All environment variables set in these files will be available whether you're logging in through gdm or a virtual console.

- Please, can you describe the steps to follow to reproduce your issue ?
- Can you provide the output of the command "lsb_release -rd"
- Can you provide the output of the command "apt-cache policy gdm"
- Can you provide the value of the shell returned by "getent passwd $USER" when logged in with the user with this issue.

Thanks in advance.

Ah, I see where I went wrong.

Environment variables set in ~/.profile need to be exported in order to be present in x-session-manager and all its descendants. (Whereas they will be present in login shells even when they are not exported.) The line 'PATH=~/bin:"${PATH}"' (no export) and the fact that everything worked as expected when logging in on the virtual console made me think that those variables did not need to be exported.

After adding the appropriate "export" commands everything works fine.

Sorry for bothering you and thanks for your efforts!

Thank you for reporting back, Philipp.
Closing as "invalid" again.