Comment 7 for bug 155423

Tormod Volden wrote:
> If you use the synaptic GUI you should not use sudo, but just start it
> from the Administration menu. Does it still pick up your noclobber
> setting? This is in your .bashrc?

Yes, it's in my .bashrc. But I also noticed something else unusual - I
export BASH_ENV=~/.bashrc. And, this survives into the environment of
"gksu synaptic", thus setting noclobber in every shell spawned by
synaptic. This may be a fairly rare configuration, and thus people
haven't seen the problem much.

Without that export of BASH_ENV, the noclobber is not propagated and
update-grub works.