Hi,

Arch Linux seems like a nice distro but one thing bothers me. In some other distros I can control my shell variables ($PATH etc.) by editing .bash_profile and .bashrc files but Arch seems to use also /etc/profile and /etc/profile.d/ . However, there doesn't appear to be man page for profile or profile.d so I thought that maybe someone here in linuxquestions could briefly explain why Arch uses /etc/profile and /etc/profile.d/ ?

most distro's use them, they are pretty standard. bashrc should be sourced still just fine.

Well, maybe I should be more specific about the nature of my concerns. You see, my normal user's PATH contains what is specified in /etc/profile and /etc/profile.d/ . So far so good, but when I su to root and write echo $PATH I only get /sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin . So /etc/profile and /etc/profile.d/ don't seem to apply after I su to root and, furthermore, I have no idea where this /sbin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin is configured in the first place (not in $.bash_profile, $.bashrc, /root/.bash_profile or /root/.bashrc). My original concern was (and still is) that I was hoping to get some explanation how these shell variables are configured in Arch so that I could figure out how I could keep my $PATH even after I su to root.

I decided to solve my problem by adding an alias to ~/.bashrc:

alias su='su -m'

This preserves user's environment, including PATH, when you su to root.

I found out where Arch Linux defines default PATH settings. It's in /etc/login.defs (see ENV_PATH and ENV_SUPATH). Just thought to let you know, in case some other newbie is struggling with the same problem.