gdm Xsession not sourcing .xprofile (anymore)

[Brian J. Murrell]

Binary package hint: gdm

I have a bunch of stuff in my ~/.xprofile (PATH setting, etc.) that seems to have stopped working recently. Has the Xsession file /etc/gdm/Xsession recently stopped processing this file, or has a file been removed from /etc/X11/Xsession.d that sourced ~/.xprofile?

The help text for /etc/gdm/Xsession says:

            <term>BaseXsession</term>
            <listitem>
              <synopsis>BaseXsession=&lt;etc&gt;/gdm/Xsession</synopsis>
              <para>
                This is the base X session file. When a user logs in, this
                script will be run with the selected session as the first
                argument. The selected session will be the
                <filename>Exec=</filename> from the
                <filename>.desktop</filename> file of the session.
              </para>

and my configuration is:

$ grep BaseXsession /etc/gdm/*
/etc/gdm/factory-gdm.conf:BaseXsession=/etc/gdm/Xsession
/etc/gdm/gdm.conf:BaseXsession=/etc/gdm/Xsession
/etc/gdm/gdm.conf.dpkg-old:BaseXsession=/etc/gdm/Xsession

So why's this all of a sudden not working any more?

Certainly I can add a file to /etc/X11/Xsession.d/ but surely we all should not have to to maintain this past behaviour.

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

Thanks for your bug. I've uploaded a new revision fixing it

[Sebastien Bacher (seb128)]

gdm (2.19.5-0ubuntu3) gutsy; urgency=low

  * debian/Xsession:
    - read profile configurations (LP: #130941)

 -- Sebastien Bacher <email address hidden> Wed, 08 Aug 2007 17:40:37 +0200

[Brendan O'Dea (bod)]

I'm not sure that this is entirely a good idea. /etc/gdm/Xsession is run as /bin/sh, which on my system is dash. Sourcing my ~/.profile, which is intended for $SHELL (ksh in this case) doesn't always work out as intended.

[Brian J. Murrell (brian-interlinx)]

If you go back and read the original comment you will see we are talking about sourcing ~/.xprofile, not ~/.profile.