Ubuntu
xorg package

  1. Bug #366728
  2. Comment #12

Comment 12 for bug 366728

Revision history for this message
robinmills (robinmills) wrote : Re: LD_LIBRARY_PATH not loads from .profile

In the file /etc/environment, I've added LD_LOVELY_PATH and LD_LIBRARY_PATH. LD_LOVELY_PATH survives startup. Somebody is removing LD_LIBRARY_PATH.

508 /home/rmills> cat /etc/environment
PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games"
LD_LOVELY_PATH="/usr/local/lib"
LD_LIBRARY_PATH="/usr/local/lib"
509 /home/rmills>

I had another couple of thoughts about this:
1) The Mac uses a 'magic' file to set the user's environment ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist
2) Windows uses the registry to set the user's environment

This feels correct to me. Bash (and the other shells) should have nothing to do with setting global (or user-wide) environment strings. Sure, the shells can change the environment - however the initial environment should be set elsewhere and I think that's about what /etc/environment does.

However somebody's modifying LD_LIBRARY_PATH between reading the file /etc/environment and user processes being started. Or maybe the parser for /etc/environment simply ignores LD_LIBRARY_PATH in a well-intended conspiracy with ldconfig.