New installation of Sarge; still ironing out the details.

in /etc/profile, the default PATH is set as:
PATH="/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games"
(that was set up by the debian installer; I haven't changed it)

in my ~/.bash_profile I put:
PATH=$PATH:/usr/lib/brickos/util

but if I type "env" or "echo $PATH" in a Gnome terminal window, the PATH is:
/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin

I searched around & found in /etc/init.d/gdm there's a line that says:
PATH=/sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin

so that agrees with the first 4 entries I get in the terminal window, but where's /usr/local/sbin coming from? and what happened to /usr/bin/X11 and /usr/games and /usr/lib/brickos/util?

If I get out of X (by ctl-alt-F1) and login at the command line, then "echo $PATH" responds exactly as I would expect:
"/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games:/usr/lib/brickos/util"

What's going on here? How do I set my path in X?

Perhaps you should also check ENV_SUPATH and ENV_PATH in /etc/login.defs. Different ways of logging in (from CLI or a GUI login) appear to use different shell configuration files. I've never figured out how it works exactly.

OK, those 2 entries in /etc/login.defs agree exactly with what I get in Gnome terminal windows. (I guess when I checked the PATH earlier, I didn't realize I was in an su window.)

But, it seems that in an X session, my .bash_profile is just ignored. Is this normal in Debian? (It's not in Gentoo: there, my PATH in an X session is exactly the same as in console mode.