24.11.2006 19:50

There was still an open problem on my list: Namely, that my PATH variable is truncated if I use the fingerprint reader to login in gdm. I did not really solve the problem. That is, I still don't understand why the path is set differently depending on whether I login with password or fingerprint. I don't understand actually at all where the PATH is set in gdm. There are these lines in "/etc/gdm/gdm.conf"

# Default path to set. The profile scripts will likely override this value.
# This value will be overridden with the value from /etc/default/login if it
# contains "ROOT=(pathvalue)". #DefaultPath=/usr/local/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/sbin:/usr/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games

I fixed my problem by uncommenting the line starting with DefaultPath. So apparently if this line is there, it sets the default path in gdm, but if not? I don't have the "/etc/default/login" memtioned above. There seems to be some confusion where the PATH is really set. I found similar problems like mine (not involving fingerprint readers though) on the web. But no answer was really satisfactory. What appears are the usual suspects:

/etc/environment
~/.bash_profile
~/.basrc


Or similar things for other shells. What I know by now, is that out of these three only "~/.bashrc" is read by gdm. If you want to make local changes to the PATH do it there. And if you want to do global changes do them in "/etc/gdm/gdm.conf" to make sure it is applied.