I'm trying to add my Qt4.3 directory to my PATH, but I'm getting wierd results. I tried setting the two files:

Edited /etc/profile to:
if [ "`id -u`" -eq 0 ]; then
PATH="/usr/local/Qt4.3/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin"
else
PATH=/usr/local/Qt4.3/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/games
fi

Didn't work, so I also changed /etc/login.defs:

ENV_SUPATH PATH=/usr/local/Qt4.3/bin:/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11
ENV_PATH PATH=/usr/local/Qt4.3/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games

I logged out and back in again, but the path variable from a console window is:
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games

What's going on here ?

OS is Debian etch.

Have you tried putting it in your .bash_profile?

PATH=$PATH:Qt...
export PATH

and then source it.

After making the PATH assignment, you need to export it, like so:

I don't have a .bash_profile in etc.

There is an export statement at the end of .profile
I didn't include it in my post, but here's the rest of it: (I dunno what "if $PS1" is)

if [ "$PS1" ]; then
if [ "$BASH" ]; then
PS1='\u@\h:\w\$ '
else
if [ "`id -u`" -eq 0 ]; then
PS1='# '
else
PS1='$ '
fi
fi
fi

# ?? this didn't take !!
# PATH="/usr/local/Qt4.3/bin:"$PATH
export PATH

umask 022

PS1 is the prompt.

meant bash_profile in your home directory, by the way.

.bashrc and .bash_profile are hidden files in the users home directory. /etc would have bash_profile and bashrc (bash.bashrc on some distros).

This is stated incorrectly. It should be '# PATH=$PATH:/usr/local/Qt4.3/bin'. Then remove the comment tag (#) and the double quotes. For more information on the issue of quotes (single and double) see the bash man pages.

The first version above leaves PATH with just one folder: /usr/local/Qt4.3/bin, assuming the double quotes haven't caused problems.

The second version assigns PATH the current value of PATH plus /usr/local/Qt4.3/bin

Yes I know the hash symbol is a comment, I've altered the file a bit since it didn't work just to see if it made any difference.
I tried with and without quotes, also just to see if it made a difference, but the quotes didn't seem to cause any problem.
This is what my first attempt looked like:

# /etc/.profile

if [ "`id -u`" -eq 0 ]; then
PATH=/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin
else
PATH=/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/games
fi

# if ... fi prompt stuff

PATH=/usr/local/Qt4.3/bin:$PATH
export PATH

umask 022

# eof

But the point is when I type echo $PATH on the command line, it looks like:
/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/bin/X11:/usr/games
There's no X11 in my profile (!?) which led me to think that the path is being set from another script elsewhere...but where ??

I did a grep on X11, looked in home and /etc directories, only file that contains it is /etc/.login.defs (see my first post) but changing this file sort-of worked, if I was super user, path had Qt in there, but not as normal user...can't figure this out !

Then perhaps a different search query is called for in your case. Try find /etc -type f | xargs grep 'PATH' to find all references in /etc for PATH. Then track then down one by one until you find the offending case.

Maybe, the best place to define PATH is an entry in /etc/profile.d directory. Look at the other files there: you can put a similar script named qt4.sh. On my OpenSuse box I installed the Qt development package (headers and libraries) and it put qt3.sh and qt3.csh in /etc/profile.d automatically. If you have installed from source, you may have a look in the directory where you compiled and look if these scripts have been created for you. Cheers!

Theres lots of hits, but none of interest.
I tried searching for '/usr/bin/X11:' one hit, /etc/login.defs