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A .profile puzzle

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  A .profile puzzle Gene Heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2021-10-17 18:20 +0200
    Re: A .profile puzzle deloptes <emanoil.kotsev@deloptes.org> - 2021-10-17 18:40 +0200
      Re: A .profile puzzle Gene Heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2021-10-17 19:30 +0200
        Re: A .profile puzzle "Andrew M.A. Cater" <amacater@einval.com> - 2021-10-17 19:40 +0200
          Re: A .profile puzzle David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2021-10-22 17:00 +0200
      Re: A .profile puzzle Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2021-10-17 20:10 +0200
        Re: A .profile puzzle Gene Heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2021-10-17 20:30 +0200
    Re: A .profile puzzle Dan Ritter <dsr@randomstring.org> - 2021-10-17 19:00 +0200
      Re: A .profile puzzle Gene Heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2021-10-17 20:20 +0200
        Re: A .profile puzzle songbird <songbird@anthive.com> - 2021-10-17 21:50 +0200
          Re: A .profile puzzle Gene Heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2021-10-17 23:00 +0200
          Re: A .profile puzzle Stefan Monnier <monnier@iro.umontreal.ca> - 2021-10-17 23:20 +0200
            Re: A .profile puzzle David Christensen <dpchrist@holgerdanske.com> - 2021-10-18 02:40 +0200
              Re: A .profile puzzle Douglas McGarrett <dmcgarrett@optonline.net> - 2021-10-18 03:20 +0200
                Re: A .profile puzzle Gene Heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2021-10-18 06:00 +0200
            Re: A .profile puzzle songbird <songbird@anthive.com> - 2021-10-18 05:20 +0200
    Re: A .profile puzzle Will Mengarini <seldon@eskimo.com> - 2021-10-18 07:30 +0200
      Re: A .profile puzzle Gene Heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2021-10-18 07:50 +0200
        Re: A .profile puzzle Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2021-10-18 13:20 +0200
          Re: A .profile puzzle Gene Heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2021-10-18 15:00 +0200
            Re: A .profile puzzle Greg Wooledge <greg@wooledge.org> - 2021-10-18 15:50 +0200
              Re: A .profile puzzle David Wright <deblis@lionunicorn.co.uk> - 2021-10-18 18:20 +0200
    Re: A .profile puzzle piorunz <piorunz@gmx.com> - 2021-10-24 04:10 +0200
      Re: A .profile puzzle Gene Heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> - 2021-10-24 05:30 +0200

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#241413 — A .profile puzzle

Greetings all;

The local electrical system, while better than Haiti's is getting to be a 
nuisance with 5 second power failures about weekly, or is that weakly?

Most of my machines are running a 64 bit buster with a preempt-rt kernel. 

I made some mods to a 3d printer project in openscad last week, printed 
it, but forgot to save it. So I lost it when the latest failure rebooted 
that machine. A procedure I had long since committed to muscle memory 
now requires I be root to do what I've been doing as me for the last 
year, so I have now reprinted that after reinventing it, 4 times, w/o 
changing the printout, after the latest failure I have to be root to 
mount the card from the printer, I have to be root to overwrite the 
resliced file to the printers SD card, root to do it all. But mc now 
goes thru the motions as me, without telling me it doesn't have 
permission to overwrite that file.  What the heck?

2 things really.

1. Before the latest failure I could do all this as me because the mount 
point for the card is in my home directory, I own it all. And didn't 
have to be root to do any of it.  This was not fixed by a 2nd reboot.

2. and another pesky thing is starting a konsole to do work, needs a 
$PATH modification that we used to put in ~.profile. But opening a 
terminal hasn't called a ". .profile" since about jessie.  So thats 
another PITA.

So, what has replaced .profile as the function for such as that in recent 
releases?

Thank you.

Cheers, Gene Heskett.
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>

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#241415

Gene Heskett wrote:

> 1. Before the latest failure I could do all this as me because the mount
> point for the card is in my home directory, I own it all. And didn't
> have to be root to do any of it.  This was not fixed by a 2nd reboot.
> 

I guess this problem is not related to the .profile issue you are having
below.
Check the permissions on the mount point and the fstab and also your group
membership.
The SD card might also need a fsck.

> 2. and another pesky thing is starting a konsole to do work, needs a
> $PATH modification that we used to put in ~.profile. But opening a
> terminal hasn't called a ". .profile" since about jessie.  So thats
> another PITA.
> 
> So, what has replaced .profile as the function for such as that in recent
> releases?

AFAIK bash is not reading profile when you login, but not sure - it could be
also that it is not a login shell.
AFAIK you should open the terminal with "bash --login" to read the profile.
So try in the terminal "bash --login"

I have put in my .profile

alias bash='bash --login'

long time ago

-- 
FCD6 3719 0FFB F1BF 38EA 4727 5348 5F1F DCFE BCB0

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#241417

On Sunday 17 October 2021 12:35:01 deloptes wrote:

> Gene Heskett wrote:
> > 1. Before the latest failure I could do all this as me because the
> > mount point for the card is in my home directory, I own it all. And
> > didn't have to be root to do any of it.  This was not fixed by a 2nd
> > reboot.
>
> I guess this problem is not related to the .profile issue you are
> having below.

Agreed.

> Check the permissions on the mount point

done, I still own it.

> and the fstab

its not in fstab, never was. I touched a file in 
home/gene/Downloads/3dp.stf named sdb1 to create a mount I didn't have 
to search thru /media to access.

Up until this 5 second power failure, I could, as me, mount that SD card 
there, and use mc, as me, to overwrite a file on that card, then sync; 
eject sdb1. Led on card adapter goes out, pull the card, take it back to 
the printer and select and print the updated file.  Now I have to be 
root to do any of it except the printer. The card is vfat, which has no 
concept of file ownership.

> and also your  
> group membership.

gene@dddprint:~/AppImages$ cat /etc/group|grep gene
dialout:x:20:gene
cdrom:x:24:gene
sudo:x:27:gene
audio:x:29:pulse,gene
video:x:44:gene
gene:x:1000:

Nothing changed there in months.

> The SD card might also need a fsck.

by whose fsck?

> > 2. and another pesky thing is starting a konsole to do work, needs a
> > $PATH modification that we used to put in ~.profile. But opening a
> > terminal hasn't called a ". .profile" since about jessie.  So thats
> > another PITA.
> >
> > So, what has replaced .profile as the function for such as that in
> > recent releases?
>
> AFAIK bash is not reading profile when you login, but not sure - it
> could be also that it is not a login shell.

XFCe login, I think. I only see it once on that machine. logging in 
remotely with "ssh -Y machine-name" or 'user1000'@machine-name is how I 
generally run things from a comfy chair.

> AFAIK you should open the terminal with "bash --login" to read the
> profile. So try in the terminal "bash --login"

Done, but no change in the $PATH. But it did take two ctl-d's to exit it.

> I have put in my .profile
>
> alias bash='bash --login'
>
> long time ago

Thank you deloptes.

Cheers, Gene Heskett.
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>

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#241418

On Sun, Oct 17, 2021 at 01:23:34PM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Sunday 17 October 2021 12:35:01 deloptes wrote:
> 
> > Gene Heskett wrote:
> > > 1. Before the latest failure I could do all this as me because the
> > > mount point for the card is in my home directory, I own it all. And
> > > didn't have to be root to do any of it.  This was not fixed by a 2nd
> > > reboot.
> >
> > I guess this problem is not related to the .profile issue you are
> > having below.
> 
> Agreed.
> 
> > Check the permissions on the mount point
> 
> done, I still own it.
> 
> > and the fstab
> 
> its not in fstab, never was. I touched a file in 
> home/gene/Downloads/3dp.stf named sdb1 to create a mount I didn't have 
> to search thru /media to access.
> 

What on EARTH? This is a very trange way to do this, I think.

Either put it in fstab at which point it will alwsays be found or learn
where it's mounted under /media - which will be consistent, maybe? 
Interestingly,mounting an SD card that fits an SD card slot gave me one path, 
a micro-SDin a holder gave me another but they were always consistent.

lsblk is your friend here, I think, as is the mount command.

> Up until this 5 second power failure, I could, as me, mount that SD card 
> there, and use mc, as me, to overwrite a file on that card, then sync; 
> eject sdb1. Led on card adapter goes out, pull the card, take it back to 
> the printer and select and print the updated file.  Now I have to be 
> root to do any of it except the printer. The card is vfat, which has no 
> concept of file ownership.
> 
> > and also your  
> > group membership.
> 
> gene@dddprint:~/AppImages$ cat /etc/group|grep gene
> dialout:x:20:gene
> cdrom:x:24:gene
> sudo:x:27:gene
> audio:x:29:pulse,gene
> video:x:44:gene
> gene:x:1000:
> 
> Nothing changed there in months.
> 
> > The SD card might also need a fsck.
> 
> by whose fsck?
> 

Make sure it's not mounted, then fsck the device. Probably dosfstools is
needed.

> > > 2. and another pesky thing is starting a konsole to do work, needs a
> > > $PATH modification that we used to put in ~.profile. But opening a
> > > terminal hasn't called a ". .profile" since about jessie.  So thats
> > > another PITA.
> > >
> > > So, what has replaced .profile as the function for such as that in
> > > recent releases?
> >
> > AFAIK bash is not reading profile when you login, but not sure - it
> > could be also that it is not a login shell.
> 
> XFCe login, I think. I only see it once on that machine. logging in 
> remotely with "ssh -Y machine-name" or 'user1000'@machine-name is how I 
> generally run things from a comfy chair.
> 
> > AFAIK you should open the terminal with "bash --login" to read the
> > profile. So try in the terminal "bash --login"
> 
> Done, but no change in the $PATH. But it did take two ctl-d's to exit it.
> 
> > I have put in my .profile
> >
> > alias bash='bash --login'
> >
> > long time ago
> 
> Thank you deloptes.
> 
> Cheers, Gene Heskett.
> -- 
> "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
>  soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
> -Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
> If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
>  - Louis D. Brandeis
> Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>
> 
Take care, with all good wishes as always,

Andy Cater

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#241600

On Sun 17 Oct 2021 at 17:36:19 (+0000), Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 17, 2021 at 01:23:34PM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > On Sunday 17 October 2021 12:35:01 deloptes wrote:
> > 
> > > Gene Heskett wrote:
> > > > 1. Before the latest failure I could do all this as me because the
> > > > mount point for the card is in my home directory, I own it all. And
> > > > didn't have to be root to do any of it.  This was not fixed by a 2nd
> > > > reboot.
> > >
> > > I guess this problem is not related to the .profile issue you are
> > > having below.
> > 
> > Agreed.
> > 
> > > Check the permissions on the mount point
> > 
> > done, I still own it.

"done" doesn't quite cover it. We don't know whether something was
mounted on the mount point (which means that the ownership/permissions
apply to the something, not to the mount point), or not (in which case
you see the ownership/permissions of the mount point itself). You made
this error back in February.

> > > and the fstab
> > 
> > its not in fstab, never was.

Which suggests that the real mount point ownership/permissions will be
important.

> > I touched a file in 
> > home/gene/Downloads/3dp.stf named sdb1 to create a mount I didn't have 
> > to search thru /media to access.
> > 
> 
> What on EARTH? This is a very [s]trange way to do this, I think.

Yes, no idea what all that is about.

> Either put it in fstab at which point it will alwsays be found or learn
> where it's mounted under /media - which will be consistent, maybe? 
> Interestingly,mounting an SD card that fits an SD card slot gave me one path, 
> a micro-SDin a holder gave me another but they were always consistent.

My own experience is that the ID (/dev/disk/by-id) varies by what the SD
is pushed into, whereas the Path (/dev/disk/by-path) varies by the PC's
socket that it's plugged into (which could of course be the same).

So any card that's pushed into an SD→USB holder will get the ID of
the holder, but its Path will depend on the USB socket plugged into.

In the absence of any more specific information (ie, a known LABEL or
UUID), I configure fstab to mount the device on /media/slot or
/media/white as appropriate. I find that the easiest way to avoid
confusing two "foreign" SD cards. (The holder is white.)

I assume that microSD→SD converters are passive, as they all behave
as effectively "invisible". I'm not sure how I would test this,
though, because the only microSD slots I have are in mobile phones
and Rokus etc.

> > Up until this 5 second power failure, I could, as me, mount that SD card 
> > there, and use mc, as me, to overwrite a file on that card, then sync; 
> > eject sdb1. Led on card adapter goes out, pull the card, take it back to 
> > the printer and select and print the updated file.  Now I have to be 
> > root to do any of it except the printer. The card is vfat, which has no 
> > concept of file ownership.

Not intrinsically, but ownership/permissions can be imposed upon
mounting it (uid,gid,umask,fmask,dmask).

I think you were using usbmount at one time, and also that you were
having problems with undesired automounting, but I haven't looked
back for details, as I think your configuration is probably too
different from mine for me to be any help with this specific power
outage symptom.

> > > The SD card might also need a fsck.
> > 
> > by whose fsck?
> 
> Make sure it's not mounted, then fsck the device. Probably dosfstools is
> needed.

In my experience, cards and sticks that want a fsck just emit a
message in the logs, rather than refusing to be mounted:

  FAT-fs (sdc1): Volume was not properly unmounted. Some data may be corrupt. Please run fsck.

That may differ with gross corruption, but I'd expect a lot more noise
in the logs, were that the case.

> > > > 2. and another pesky thing is starting a konsole to do work, needs a
> > > > $PATH modification that we used to put in ~.profile. But opening a
> > > > terminal hasn't called a ". .profile" since about jessie.  So thats
> > > > another PITA.
> > > >
> > > > So, what has replaced .profile as the function for such as that in
> > > > recent releases?
> > >
> > > AFAIK bash is not reading profile when you login, but not sure - it
> > > could be also that it is not a login shell.
> > 
> > XFCe login, I think. I only see it once on that machine. logging in 
> > remotely with "ssh -Y machine-name" or 'user1000'@machine-name is how I 
> > generally run things from a comfy chair.
> > 
> > > AFAIK you should open the terminal with "bash --login" to read the
> > > profile. So try in the terminal "bash --login"

Perhaps start at https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2020/08/msg00196.html
and work up the thread. That might answer thing (2.), and could even
suggest why a power outage followed by a reboot could change things,
if you'd altered the configuration since the last boot.

Cheers,
David.

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#241419

On Sun, Oct 17, 2021 at 06:35:01PM +0200, deloptes wrote:
> > 2. and another pesky thing is starting a konsole to do work, needs a
> > $PATH modification that we used to put in ~.profile. But opening a
> > terminal hasn't called a ". .profile" since about jessie.  So thats
> > another PITA.
> > 
> > So, what has replaced .profile as the function for such as that in recent
> > releases?
> 
> AFAIK bash is not reading profile when you login, but not sure - it could be
> also that it is not a login shell.
> AFAIK you should open the terminal with "bash --login" to read the profile.
> So try in the terminal "bash --login"
> 
> I have put in my .profile
> 
> alias bash='bash --login'
> 
> long time ago

OK, first thing first: that alias won't do *anything* useful.  If Gene
is talking about starting a terminal from his window manager or desktop
environment, that terminal is going to run $SHELL which is /bin/bash.
It will not look at his aliases, no matter where they're defined.  It's
just going to run bash.  Not "bash --login".

Now let's step back a bit.

When you run an instance of a shell, there are two ways you can do it.
You either run a "login shell", or a "non-login shell".

The purpose of a login shell is to be executed when you login.  That's
the original intent.  Back in the 70s and 80s, there was no such thing
as a "desktop".  There was just the shell.  You logged in by connecting
your terminal or your modem to the host system, and getting a textual
prompt.  After authentication, you were "logged in", and the system would
run your account's shell with a "-" character in front of it.  This is
the ancient way that your system said "this should be a login shell, not
a regular shell".

It looks like this:

unicorn:~$ ps -ft tty1
UID          PID    PPID  C STIME TTY          TIME CMD
root         699       1  0 Oct09 tty1     00:00:00 /bin/login -p --
greg         851     699  0 Oct09 tty1     00:00:00 -bash
greg         863     851  0 Oct09 tty1     00:00:00 /bin/sh /usr/bin/startx
[...]

See where it says "-bash"?  That's my login shell.

The purpose of having a "login shell" and a "regular shell" is because
you probably have some things that you need to do once per session,
when you login.  Like, setting up your environment variables.  Or
printing today's calendar, or today's message from the administration.
All of those things are unnecessary in a regular shell.  The environment
is already set up, and you've already seen today's calendar or whatever.

Any other time you started a shell, it would not have a "-" in front of its
name, so it would be a regular shell.  This included shell escapes from
your text editor or mail reader or news reader or pager.  Any time you
escaped to a new shell from inside your editor, you didn't need to go
through all the gyrations that a login shell did.  You don't want to
see the calendar again, etc.

A decade or two later, some people developed a windowing system.

In this windowing system, there's a terminal emulator.  Normally when you
run a terminal emulator, you run a shell inside it.  (Not always, but
usually.)  This shell doesn't need to be a login shell.  You're probably
going to open half a dozen terminal emulators with shells in them, maybe
more.  You don't need to run the day's calendar, or set up the session
environment, in every single terminal.  All of that has been taken care
of already.  (Right?)

So, in an X terminal emulator, you normally run a NON-login shell.  Just
a regular shell.

That's how it's supposed to work.

However.

Some people found that they had a really hard time getting their initial
environment set up during their X logins.  This was common among newbies
especially, because they didn't understand the new login procedure, and
had no idea how to customize it.

And where did we have a shit-load of Unix newbies?  Universities.

So, in the world of academia, there is a whole different paradigm.  In
this world, where everyone is expected to be incompetent, the old way
of setting up your environment one time and inheriting it in every
shell... that doesn't work.

In the newbie-centric environment, where nobody knows how to do anything
correctly, terminal emulators are configured to run login shells.

There's an option for it, of course.  The people who wrote xterm realized
that one might wish to run either a regular shell or a login shell.  So
xterm has this option:

       -ls     This option indicates that the shell that is started in the
               xterm window will be a login shell (i.e., the first character
               of argv[0] will be a dash, indicating to the shell that it
               should read the user's .login or .profile).

Universities configured things so that their users' terminals would all
run with this option, which means the users would get a login shell in
each terminal.

And then the users, who were all newbies and don't know any better, could
simply be told "if you want to change your environment, edit this one
dot file".  (In academia, csh was the dominant shell, so the file in
question would usually be .login as the xterm man page hints at.  In
most Linux distributions, the shell is bash, so the file is .profile
or .bash_profile.  But in any case, there's just *one* file for the user
to worry about, and support calls are reduced.)

In modern times, the place where we find nothing but newbies as far as
the eye can see... is called Ubuntu.  If you get a question from an Ubuntu
user, they're probably completely inexperienced, and know virtually
nothing.  Therefore, in an Ubuntu setup, it would make sense to strip
everything down so there's only one way to do things.  That makes it
easier to answer questions.  You don't have to *educate* the user.  You
don't have to help them understand anything.  You don't have to explain
why things work they way they do.  You just tell them "edit this file".

In Gene's old environment, someone had clearly gone Academia/Ubuntu on
him, and had configured his terminals to run login shells.

This isn't *wrong*.  It's a way to do things.  But what it means is Gene
was operating in Ubuntu-user mode for all that time.  He never learned
the original way to do things, or why he was using the simplified way, or
even that there *was* a choice of ways.

So, that's the history and background.

Now we're back to the present.  The question, I believe, is:


   **** How do I set up my environment? ****


This is not a trivial question to answer, because there are so many
different possible setups.  It all depends on how you login.

1) If you ssh into the system, then you get a login shell.  This login
   shell *is* your session.  So, all you have to do is set up your login
   shell environment.

   If your shell is bash, then you edit the file .bash_profile if that
   exists, or .bash_login if that exists, or .profile if neither of
   the other two files exists.

   On a regular Debian system, there is no .bash_profile or .bash_login
   file, so you'd simply edit .profile.  That's the only file you have
   to worry about for your login enviroment.

2) If you login on the Linux console (/dev/tty1 and so on), in text mode,
   then you *also* get a login shell.  So everything is the same as the
   ssh case.  See above.

   Even if you start an X session (by typing "startx"), your environment
   has already been set up by your login shell.  You don't need to set
   it up again inside the X session.  The X session inherits the
   environment from the login shell, and then the terminal emulators
   inherit it from the X session, and the shells that run inside the
   terminal emulators inherit it from the terminals.

3) If you login to X11 with a graphical display manager, everything
   is completely different.  You do *not* get a login shell as your
   session.  You don't get a login shell at all.  Ever.  (Unless someone
   went and Ubuntu-fied your terminals.)

   In this case, you can have one of a few different types of session.
   Because why would anything ever be simple?

   If you use a standard Debian X11 session, you can configured it in one
   of two different ways:

   a) If you have a .xsession file, this overrides the system's X11
      session.  You control exactly what gets executed.  You can
      configure your environment in the .xsession file, or you can have
      it dot in a shell configuration file.  You just have to know what
      you're doing.

   b) If you use the standard system session, Debian lets you customize
      it in the .xsessionrc file.  This gets dotted in by the session
      before it starts running X apps.  So you can configure your
      environment in this file.

      .xsessionrc is unique to Debian.  It's not found on other Linux
      variants.  Some other Linuxes introduce .xprofile or other files.

   And then there's GNOME.  Because obviously GNOME has to be unique and
   have its own separate session type, and its own way of doing everything,
   none of the answers above applies to GNOME.  Except maybe the
   .xsessionrc file.  I think Debian still arranges for GNOME sessions
   to dot that in.  Maybe.  Don't quote me on it.

   (But don't think that your job is done if you manage to export
   environment variables from .xsessionrc.  Oh no.  GNOME is *so* much
   worse than that.  It's so bad that I won't even try to describe
   it here.  It needs a whole thread of its own.  We've had several
   over the years.)

4) And finally there's Wayland.  I don't know what the hell Wayland does.
   Nobody who uses it has ever told us how it works.  You won't find any
   useful information about it on the Debian wiki, etc.

See also:

https://wiki.debian.org/Xsession
https://wiki.debian.org/EnvironmentVariables

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#241421

On Sunday 17 October 2021 14:09:23 Greg Wooledge wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 17, 2021 at 06:35:01PM +0200, deloptes wrote:
> > > 2. and another pesky thing is starting a konsole to do work, needs
> > > a $PATH modification that we used to put in ~.profile. But opening
> > > a terminal hasn't called a ". .profile" since about jessie.  So
> > > thats another PITA.
> > >
> > > So, what has replaced .profile as the function for such as that in
> > > recent releases?
> >
> > AFAIK bash is not reading profile when you login, but not sure - it
> > could be also that it is not a login shell.
> > AFAIK you should open the terminal with "bash --login" to read the
> > profile. So try in the terminal "bash --login"
> >
> > I have put in my .profile
> >
> > alias bash='bash --login'
> >
> > long time ago
>
> OK, first thing first: that alias won't do *anything* useful.  If Gene
> is talking about starting a terminal from his window manager or
> desktop environment, that terminal is going to run $SHELL which is
> /bin/bash. It will not look at his aliases, no matter where they're
> defined.  It's just going to run bash.  Not "bash --login".
>
> Now let's step back a bit.
>
> When you run an instance of a shell, there are two ways you can do it.
> You either run a "login shell", or a "non-login shell".
>
> The purpose of a login shell is to be executed when you login.  That's
> the original intent.  Back in the 70s and 80s, there was no such thing
> as a "desktop".  There was just the shell.  You logged in by
> connecting your terminal or your modem to the host system, and getting
> a textual prompt.  After authentication, you were "logged in", and the
> system would run your account's shell with a "-" character in front of
> it.  This is the ancient way that your system said "this should be a
> login shell, not a regular shell".
>
> It looks like this:
>
> unicorn:~$ ps -ft tty1
> UID          PID    PPID  C STIME TTY          TIME CMD
> root         699       1  0 Oct09 tty1     00:00:00 /bin/login -p --
> greg         851     699  0 Oct09 tty1     00:00:00 -bash
> greg         863     851  0 Oct09 tty1     00:00:00 /bin/sh
> /usr/bin/startx [...]
>
> See where it says "-bash"?  That's my login shell.
>
> The purpose of having a "login shell" and a "regular shell" is because
> you probably have some things that you need to do once per session,
> when you login.  Like, setting up your environment variables.  Or
> printing today's calendar, or today's message from the administration.
> All of those things are unnecessary in a regular shell.  The
> environment is already set up, and you've already seen today's
> calendar or whatever.
>
> Any other time you started a shell, it would not have a "-" in front
> of its name, so it would be a regular shell.  This included shell
> escapes from your text editor or mail reader or news reader or pager. 
> Any time you escaped to a new shell from inside your editor, you
> didn't need to go through all the gyrations that a login shell did. 
> You don't want to see the calendar again, etc.
>
> A decade or two later, some people developed a windowing system.
>
> In this windowing system, there's a terminal emulator.  Normally when
> you run a terminal emulator, you run a shell inside it.  (Not always,
> but usually.)  This shell doesn't need to be a login shell.  You're
> probably going to open half a dozen terminal emulators with shells in
> them, maybe more.  You don't need to run the day's calendar, or set up
> the session environment, in every single terminal.  All of that has
> been taken care of already.  (Right?)
>
> So, in an X terminal emulator, you normally run a NON-login shell. 
> Just a regular shell.
>
> That's how it's supposed to work.
>
> However.
>
> Some people found that they had a really hard time getting their
> initial environment set up during their X logins.  This was common
> among newbies especially, because they didn't understand the new login
> procedure, and had no idea how to customize it.
>
> And where did we have a shit-load of Unix newbies?  Universities.
>
> So, in the world of academia, there is a whole different paradigm.  In
> this world, where everyone is expected to be incompetent, the old way
> of setting up your environment one time and inheriting it in every
> shell... that doesn't work.
>
> In the newbie-centric environment, where nobody knows how to do
> anything correctly, terminal emulators are configured to run login
> shells.
>
> There's an option for it, of course.  The people who wrote xterm
> realized that one might wish to run either a regular shell or a login
> shell.  So xterm has this option:
>
>        -ls     This option indicates that the shell that is started in
> the xterm window will be a login shell (i.e., the first character of
> argv[0] will be a dash, indicating to the shell that it should read
> the user's .login or .profile).
>
> Universities configured things so that their users' terminals would
> all run with this option, which means the users would get a login
> shell in each terminal.
>
> And then the users, who were all newbies and don't know any better,
> could simply be told "if you want to change your environment, edit
> this one dot file".  (In academia, csh was the dominant shell, so the
> file in question would usually be .login as the xterm man page hints
> at.  In most Linux distributions, the shell is bash, so the file is
> .profile or .bash_profile.  But in any case, there's just *one* file
> for the user to worry about, and support calls are reduced.)
>
> In modern times, the place where we find nothing but newbies as far as
> the eye can see... is called Ubuntu.  If you get a question from an
> Ubuntu user, they're probably completely inexperienced, and know
> virtually nothing.  Therefore, in an Ubuntu setup, it would make sense
> to strip everything down so there's only one way to do things.  That
> makes it easier to answer questions.  You don't have to *educate* the
> user.  You don't have to help them understand anything.  You don't
> have to explain why things work they way they do.  You just tell them
> "edit this file".
>
> In Gene's old environment, someone had clearly gone Academia/Ubuntu on
> him, and had configured his terminals to run login shells.
>
> This isn't *wrong*.  It's a way to do things.  But what it means is
> Gene was operating in Ubuntu-user mode for all that time.  He never
> learned the original way to do things, or why he was using the
> simplified way, or even that there *was* a choice of ways.
>
> So, that's the history and background.
>
> Now we're back to the present.  The question, I believe, is:
>
>
>    **** How do I set up my environment? ****
>
>
> This is not a trivial question to answer, because there are so many
> different possible setups.  It all depends on how you login.
>
> 1) If you ssh into the system, then you get a login shell.  This login
>    shell *is* your session.  So, all you have to do is set up your
> login shell environment.
>
>    If your shell is bash, then you edit the file .bash_profile if that
>    exists, or .bash_login if that exists, or .profile if neither of
>    the other two files exists.
>
>    On a regular Debian system, there is no .bash_profile or
> .bash_login file, so you'd simply edit .profile.  That's the only file
> you have to worry about for your login enviroment.
>
> 2) If you login on the Linux console (/dev/tty1 and so on), in text
> mode, then you *also* get a login shell.  So everything is the same as
> the ssh case.  See above.
>
>    Even if you start an X session (by typing "startx"), your
> environment has already been set up by your login shell.  You don't
> need to set it up again inside the X session.  The X session inherits
> the environment from the login shell, and then the terminal emulators
> inherit it from the X session, and the shells that run inside the
> terminal emulators inherit it from the terminals.
>
> 3) If you login to X11 with a graphical display manager, everything
>    is completely different.  You do *not* get a login shell as your
>    session.  You don't get a login shell at all.  Ever.  (Unless
> someone went and Ubuntu-fied your terminals.)
>
>    In this case, you can have one of a few different types of session.
>    Because why would anything ever be simple?
>
>    If you use a standard Debian X11 session, you can configured it in
> one of two different ways:
>
>    a) If you have a .xsession file, this overrides the system's X11
>       session.  You control exactly what gets executed.  You can
>       configure your environment in the .xsession file, or you can
> have it dot in a shell configuration file.  You just have to know what
> you're doing.
>
>    b) If you use the standard system session, Debian lets you
> customize it in the .xsessionrc file.  This gets dotted in by the
> session before it starts running X apps.  So you can configure your
> environment in this file.
>
>       .xsessionrc is unique to Debian.  It's not found on other Linux
>       variants.  Some other Linuxes introduce .xprofile or other
> files.
>
>    And then there's GNOME.  Because obviously GNOME has to be unique
> and have its own separate session type, and its own way of doing
> everything, none of the answers above applies to GNOME.  Except maybe
> the .xsessionrc file.  I think Debian still arranges for GNOME
> sessions to dot that in.  Maybe.  Don't quote me on it.
>
>    (But don't think that your job is done if you manage to export
>    environment variables from .xsessionrc.  Oh no.  GNOME is *so* much
>    worse than that.  It's so bad that I won't even try to describe
>    it here.  It needs a whole thread of its own.  We've had several
>    over the years.)
>
> 4) And finally there's Wayland.  I don't know what the hell Wayland
> does. Nobody who uses it has ever told us how it works.  You won't
> find any useful information about it on the Debian wiki, etc.
>
> See also:
>
> https://wiki.debian.org/Xsession
> https://wiki.debian.org/EnvironmentVariables

Is it beer-thirty yet?  Tis here. Except its a stretch to call the stuff 
this diabetic drinks beer. ;o)  Some won't even call my coffee coffee.

Cheers, Gene Heskett.
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>

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#241416

Gene Heskett wrote: 
> 
> The local electrical system, while better than Haiti's is getting to be a 
> nuisance with 5 second power failures about weekly, or is that weakly?

That's a great case for a UPS...

> 1. Before the latest failure I could do all this as me because the mount 
> point for the card is in my home directory, I own it all. And didn't 
> have to be root to do any of it.  This was not fixed by a 2nd reboot.

Are you mounting via /etc/fstab? If so, show us the line.


> 2. and another pesky thing is starting a konsole to do work, needs a 
> $PATH modification that we used to put in ~.profile. But opening a 
> terminal hasn't called a ". .profile" since about jessie.  So thats 
> another PITA.
> 
> So, what has replaced .profile as the function for such as that in recent 
> releases?

I'm guessing that your shell is /bin/sh. That used to be bash,
but now it's dash.

You could make your own shell bash -- just run chsh and log out,
then come back in again.

Note that .profile is supposed to be read only by a login
shell, whereas .bashrc will be read by every interactive shell.
Here's the chunk of man bash:

       When bash is invoked as an interactive login shell, or as a
 non-interactive shell with the --login option, it first reads and
 executes commands from the file /etc/profile, if that file exists.
 After reading that file, it looks for ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login,
 and ~/.profile, in that or der, and reads and executes commands from the
 first one that exists and is readable.  The --noprofile option may be
 used when the shell is started to inhibit this behavior.
 
        When an interactive login shell exits, or a non-interactive
 login shell executes the exit builtin command, bash reads and executes
 commands from the file ~/.bash_logout, if it exists.
 
        When an interactive shell that is not a login shell is started,
 bash reads and executes commands from /etc/bash.bashrc and ~/.bashrc, if
 these files exist.  This may be inhibited by using the --norc option.
 The --rcfile file option will force bash to read and execute commands
 from file instead of /etc/bash.bashrc and ~/.bashrc.

        When bash is started non-interactively, to run a shell script,
 for example, it looks for the variable BASH_ENV in the environment,
 expands its value if it appears there, and uses the expanded value
 as the name of a file to read and execute.  Bash behaves as if the
 following command were executed: if [ -n "$BASH_ENV" ]; then .
 "$BASH_ENV"; fi but the value of the PATH variable is not used to search
 for the filename.


-dsr-

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#241420

On Sunday 17 October 2021 12:39:50 Dan Ritter wrote:

> Gene Heskett wrote:
> > The local electrical system, while better than Haiti's is getting to
> > be a nuisance with 5 second power failures about weekly, or is that
> > weakly?
>
> That's a great case for a UPS...
>
Yup, but thats 4 more of them.  Is anybody hving a real sale?

> > 1. Before the latest failure I could do all this as me because the
> > mount point for the card is in my home directory, I own it all. And
> > didn't have to be root to do any of it.  This was not fixed by a 2nd
> > reboot.
>
> Are you mounting via /etc/fstab? If so, show us the line.
nope, command line, as me, until this reboot.

> > 2. and another pesky thing is starting a konsole to do work, needs a
> > $PATH modification that we used to put in ~.profile. But opening a
> > terminal hasn't called a ". .profile" since about jessie.  So thats
> > another PITA.
> >
> > So, what has replaced .profile as the function for such as that in
> > recent releases?
>
> I'm guessing that your shell is /bin/sh. That used to be bash,
> but now it's dash.

I can't find an About for that one, its whatever xfce uses.

> You could make your own shell bash -- just run chsh and log out,
> then come back in again.
>
> Note that .profile is supposed to be read only by a login
> shell, whereas .bashrc will be read by every interactive shell.
> Here's the chunk of man bash:
>
>        When bash is invoked as an interactive login shell, or as a
>  non-interactive shell with the --login option, it first reads and
>  executes commands from the file /etc/profile, if that file exists.
>  After reading that file, it looks for ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login,
>  and ~/.profile, in that or der, and reads and executes commands from
> the first one that exists and is readable.  The --noprofile option may
> be used when the shell is started to inhibit this behavior.

I have tried putting that path stuff in .bashrc, but that fails too.

>         When an interactive login shell exits, or a non-interactive
>  login shell executes the exit builtin command, bash reads and
> executes commands from the file ~/.bash_logout, if it exists.
>
>         When an interactive shell that is not a login shell is
> started, bash reads and executes commands from /etc/bash.bashrc and
> ~/.bashrc, if these files exist.  This may be inhibited by using the
> --norc option. The --rcfile file option will force bash to read and
> execute commands from file instead of /etc/bash.bashrc and ~/.bashrc.
>
>         When bash is started non-interactively, to run a shell script,
>  for example, it looks for the variable BASH_ENV in the environment,
>  expands its value if it appears there, and uses the expanded value
>  as the name of a file to read and execute.  Bash behaves as if the
>  following command were executed: if [ -n "$BASH_ENV" ]; then .
>  "$BASH_ENV"; fi but the value of the PATH variable is not used to
> search for the filename.
>
>
> -dsr-
Thanks Dan.

Cheers, Gene Heskett.
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>

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#241424

Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Sunday 17 October 2021 12:39:50 Dan Ritter wrote:
>
>> Gene Heskett wrote:
>> > The local electrical system, while better than Haiti's is getting to
>> > be a nuisance with 5 second power failures about weekly, or is that
>> > weakly?
>>
>> That's a great case for a UPS...
>>
> Yup, but thats 4 more of them.  Is anybody hving a real sale?

  no, you buy one for the whole place and put it on tha main
panel.

  i only have a small one here for my PC and a light, but it 
has paid for itself many times over already in not having
random power outages take me down and mess things up.  normally
when a storm comes through i turn off the PC anyways because
i really don't want to have things fried (even if i do have
the UPS and surge protection).  i can do something else for
a while.

  if i were running large expensive equipment i'd surely have
some UPS and surge protection for those.  if only just enough 
to get them to shut down without destroying the work in 
progress (or themselves).


  songbird

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#241427

On Sunday 17 October 2021 15:45:36 songbird wrote:

> Gene Heskett wrote:
> > On Sunday 17 October 2021 12:39:50 Dan Ritter wrote:
> >> Gene Heskett wrote:
> >> > The local electrical system, while better than Haiti's is getting
> >> > to be a nuisance with 5 second power failures about weekly, or is
> >> > that weakly?
> >>
> >> That's a great case for a UPS...
> >
> > Yup, but thats 4 more of them.  Is anybody hving a real sale?
>
>   no, you buy one for the whole place and put it on tha main
> panel.

Thanks for the idea, but I have not seen one big enough to handle this 
place for the 6 or 7 seconds it takes for the 20kw generac to start. My 
now departed wife had COPD and needed non-stop oxygen toward the end, so 
I installed the generac about 8 or 9 years ago. It would take a 1500WA 
to handle the 2 machines in the garage plus a 1000WA in the shop 
building, and another 1000WA for the machine driving my 3d printers. 
They only make them whole house sized on bids, bring money in 
wheelborrows. I do reserve the right to bitch about the lack of timely 
maintenance as I will have to put up with this BS for a year before 
they'll replace the contacts in the substations voltage regulator.  
BTDT, several times in the 31+ years I've been here. So you could say 
I've been to this particular rodeo before.

>   i only have a small one here for my PC and a light, but it
> has paid for itself many times over already in not having
> random power outages take me down and mess things up.  normally
> when a storm comes through i turn off the PC anyways because
> i really don't want to have things fried (even if i do have
> the UPS and surge protection).  i can do something else for
> a while.
>
>   if i were running large expensive equipment i'd surely have
> some UPS and surge protection for those.  if only just enough
> to get them to shut down without destroying the work in
> progress (or themselves).
>
>
>   songbird


Cheers, Gene Heskett.
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>

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#241429

> normally when a storm comes through i turn off the PC anyways because
> I really don't want to have things fried (even if i do have the UPS
> and surge protection).

Hmmm does turning them off make any difference w.r.t a surge large
enough to pass through the surge suppression?

I thought the only effective way to make a difference is to
*unplug* them.


        Stefan

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#241438

On 10/17/21 2:12 PM, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>> normally when a storm comes through i turn off the PC anyways because
>> I really don't want to have things fried (even if i do have the UPS
>> and surge protection).
> 
> Hmmm does turning them off make any difference w.r.t a surge large
> enough to pass through the surge suppression?
> 
> I thought the only effective way to make a difference is to
> *unplug* them.


+1 if you service is overhead and your concern is lightning strikes.


David

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#241439

On 10/17/21 8:38 PM, David Christensen wrote:
> On 10/17/21 2:12 PM, Stefan Monnier wrote:
>>> normally when a storm comes through i turn off the PC anyways because
>>> I really don't want to have things fried (even if i do have the UPS
>>> and surge protection).
>>
>> Hmmm does turning them off make any difference w.r.t a surge large
>> enough to pass through the surge suppression?
>>
>> I thought the only effective way to make a difference is to
>> *unplug* them.
>
>
> +1 if you service is overhead and your concern is lightning strikes.
>
>
> David
>
You should unplug the charger to the laptop from the AC line AND
from the laptop, and don't forget to disconnect the LAN if it is wired.
However, you can't disconnect everything in the computer area or
you'll go crazy! It would be a good idea to disconnect the router from
the modem and from power. I got a bad hit from lightning in July,
and it did take out the router and a desktop and a laptop, and damaged
a printer, not to mention other devices around the house--like the TV,
ferinstance!
--doug

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#241442

On Sunday 17 October 2021 21:15:21 Douglas McGarrett wrote:

> On 10/17/21 8:38 PM, David Christensen wrote:
> > On 10/17/21 2:12 PM, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> >>> normally when a storm comes through i turn off the PC anyways
> >>> because I really don't want to have things fried (even if i do
> >>> have the UPS and surge protection).
> >>
> >> Hmmm does turning them off make any difference w.r.t a surge large
> >> enough to pass through the surge suppression?
> >>
> >> I thought the only effective way to make a difference is to
> >> *unplug* them.
> >
> > +1 if you service is overhead and your concern is lightning strikes.
> >
> >
> > David
>
> You should unplug the charger to the laptop from the AC line AND
> from the laptop, and don't forget to disconnect the LAN if it is
> wired. However, you can't disconnect everything in the computer area
> or you'll go crazy! It would be a good idea to disconnect the router
> from the modem and from power. I got a bad hit from lightning in July,
> and it did take out the router and a desktop and a laptop, and damaged
> a printer, not to mention other devices around the house--like the TV,
> ferinstance!
> --doug

Your service is probably both old and not up to code, probably 
grandfathered in if it was built before the NEC became the law here in 
the states.

I brought mine up to code in 2008, as I installed a 200 amp service 
myself and have not lost ANYTHING but a wired keyboard since. The strike 
caused me to get a shock spark similar to a door knob, jolted me and 
killed the keyboard. I now use wireless keyboards for the extra air gap, 
and its all powered up 24/7/365.25. 6 of them in various locations.

The idea between the NEC and various other regulations is that if the 
line gets hit, it should all bounce in unison so the voltage on every 
connected wire goes up and down in unison, so the connected stuff still 
see's only the 5, 12, or 24 volts that runs it.

It all may be 250k volts away from ground for a few microsecnds. A dirt 
ground, other than whats legally connected at the meterhead, is a ground 
loop that upsets this balanced condition and will eat your lunch. This 
includes the old time practice of grounding a clothes washer to the 
copper cold water pipe. That is the case in this house, but that copper 
never touches dirt, its plastic before it leaves the house. All the 
network is wired from a cable modem which has lightning arrestors before 
the cable gets into the house. So I'm a big target, I should lose stuff, 
but I haven't.

Who am I? For starters, I am a Certified Electroncs Technician, 
registered in Nebraska as NB-118. One who spent the last 18 years of his 
working life as the Chief Operator of a middle market television 
station, much of the time by myself. Now I'm your classic old fart of 
87, and getting slowly rusty but I still know a few things about 
electricity.

Cheers, Gene Heskett.
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>

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#241440

Stefan Monnier wrote:
>> normally when a storm comes through i turn off the PC anyways because
>> I really don't want to have things fried (even if i do have the UPS
>> and surge protection).
>
> Hmmm does turning them off make any difference w.r.t a surge large
> enough to pass through the surge suppression?
>
> I thought the only effective way to make a difference is to
> *unplug* them.

  i do that too at times.


  songbird

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#241443

* Gene Heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> [21-10/17=Su 12:18 -0400]:
> [...] opening a terminal hasn't called
> a ". .profile" since about jessie [...]

Check whether you *also* have either .bash_profile or
.bash_login, because either of those supersedes .profile:

ls -lA ~/.bash_{profile,login}

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#241444

On Monday 18 October 2021 01:12:42 Will Mengarini wrote:

> * Gene Heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> [21-10/17=Su 12:18 -0400]:
> > [...] opening a terminal hasn't called
> > a ". .profile" since about jessie [...]
>
> Check whether you *also* have either .bash_profile or
> .bash_login, because either of those supersedes .profile:
>
> ls -lA ~/.bash_{profile,login}

Neither present, just .bashrc, and .bash_logout

Cheers, Gene Heskett.
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>

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#241448

On Mon, Oct 18, 2021 at 01:42:43AM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Monday 18 October 2021 01:12:42 Will Mengarini wrote:
> 
> > * Gene Heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> [21-10/17=Su 12:18 -0400]:
> > > [...] opening a terminal hasn't called
> > > a ". .profile" since about jessie [...]
> >
> > Check whether you *also* have either .bash_profile or
> > .bash_login, because either of those supersedes .profile:
> >
> > ls -lA ~/.bash_{profile,login}
> 
> Neither present, just .bashrc, and .bash_logout

That's as expected, then.  Your .profile is not being read *now* because
it's not supposed to be, if you use a Display Manager to login.

Your .profile *used* to be read by terminals, because previously, your
terminals had been configured to run login shells.  However, I'd bet it
was *not* read by your session, meaning any changes to the environment
would not be seen by graphical applications that you launched directly
from your Desktop or your WM, without going through a terminal.

Assuming you run a Debian X11 Session via a Display Manager, and also
assuming you don't have a .xsession file, you probably want to configure
your environment in ~/.xsessionrc (note the "rc" on the end).

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#241453

On Monday 18 October 2021 07:17:05 Greg Wooledge wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 18, 2021 at 01:42:43AM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > On Monday 18 October 2021 01:12:42 Will Mengarini wrote:
> > > * Gene Heskett <gheskett@shentel.net> [21-10/17=Su 12:18 -0400]:
> > > > [...] opening a terminal hasn't called
> > > > a ". .profile" since about jessie [...]
> > >
> > > Check whether you *also* have either .bash_profile or
> > > .bash_login, because either of those supersedes .profile:
> > >
> > > ls -lA ~/.bash_{profile,login}
> >
> > Neither present, just .bashrc, and .bash_logout
>
> That's as expected, then.  Your .profile is not being read *now*
> because it's not supposed to be, if you use a Display Manager to
> login.
>
> Your .profile *used* to be read by terminals, because previously, your
> terminals had been configured to run login shells.  However, I'd bet
> it was *not* read by your session, meaning any changes to the
> environment would not be seen by graphical applications that you
> launched directly from your Desktop or your WM, without going through
> a terminal.
>
> Assuming you run a Debian X11 Session via a Display Manager, and also
> assuming you don't have a .xsession file, you probably want to
> configure your environment in ~/.xsessionrc (note the "rc" on the
> end).

That does not exist on that machine. I'll look into it a bit later, 
thanks Greg.

Cheers, Gene Heskett.
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page <http://geneslinuxbox.net:6309/gene>

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