Sourcing of .profile

From	Brieuc Desoutter <brieuc.desoutter@gmail.com>
Newsgroups	linux.debian.user
Subject	Sourcing of .profile
Date	2026-05-14 07:10 +0200
Message-ID	<MUwuB-50im-3@gated-at.bofh.it> (permalink)
Organization	linux.* mail to news gateway

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TL/DR: On Trixie with Gnome, right after login with…
- default .profile -> ~/bin and ~/.local/bin in PATH
- .profile as a symlink to the default .profile located in different
directory -> no ~/bin or ~/.local/bin in PATH

Why?


Hi,

I am running Trixie with Gnome and I am trying to manage my config and dot
files with GNU stow. So I have Setup/ repo (my stow directory) with a
shell/ package directory which contains my .bashrc and my .profile files.
The .profile is the same as in /etc/skel (default one).

When I stow the shell package in my $HOME, it creates a symlink ~/.profile
pointing to $HOME/Setup/shell/.profile.

The issue is that when I logout and log back in, my PATH does not contain
$HOME/bin and $HOME/.local/bin as it should.

It is as if the symlinked .profile wasn’t sourced.

default .profile file in ~ ~/bin and ~/.local/bin in PATH.
.profile as a symlink to origin
Question: is it by design? Eg only source a regular file .profile at login
(not symlink)


Thanks

B

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Thread

Sourcing of .profile Brieuc Desoutter <brieuc.desoutter@gmail.com> - 2026-05-14 07:10 +0200
  Re: Sourcing of .profile <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2026-05-14 07:40 +0200
    Re: Sourcing of .profile Brieuc Desoutter <brieuc.desoutter@gmail.com> - 2026-05-14 08:40 +0200
      Re: Sourcing of .profile Anssi Saari <anssi.saari@debian-user.mail.kapsi.fi> - 2026-05-14 09:50 +0200
        Re: Sourcing of .profile <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2026-05-14 09:50 +0200
      Re: Sourcing of .profile tomas@tuxteam.de - 2026-05-14 09:50 +0200
      Re: Sourcing of .profile Chris Green <cl@isbd.net> - 2026-05-14 10:50 +0200
  Re: Sourcing of .profile Nicolas George <george@nsup.org> - 2026-05-14 11:00 +0200
    Re: Sourcing of .profile <tomas@tuxteam.de> - 2026-05-14 11:40 +0200
      Re: Sourcing of .profile Brieuc Desoutter <brieuc.desoutter@gmail.com> - 2026-05-14 12:10 +0200
        Re: Sourcing of .profile tomas@tuxteam.de - 2026-05-14 12:30 +0200
    Re: Sourcing of .profile Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2026-05-14 13:30 +0200

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