Comment 2 for bug 1259877

@Andy - this sounds like an environment issue - I have been using keychain from the outset on Ubuntu with an Upstart session init. Either .bash_profile is not being sources (Upstart only ever runs code via /bin/sh), or that script is being sourced, or the variables it sets are not being injected into the Upstart Session Inits environment (via 'initctl set-env -g var=value').