Hi, I don't have a pressing problem, just a question.

When I check 'echo $PATH' I get a long colon seperated list that includes '/usr/bin/X11' but when I check my dot files in my home directory there's no 'X11' mentioned in any of the path settings. Similarly there's no mention in '/etc/profile' of '/usr/bin/X11'. My question is - where is the path set originally for the whole system. I thought it was '/etc/profile' but must be wrong.

I am pretty sure that PATH is set in /etc/profile. On my system, the output of echo $PATH matches the line in /etc/profile that sets the PATH for users.

cgjones:
I'm using etch on a i386 desktop. Just curious what other people have on their systems. Is $PATH always set in '/etc/profile'?

Mine is

/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/games

Debian Etch/Testing

cgjones, can you try in a console? CtrlAltF1

Same results.

You have X11 inside even from the console?
Then you have old profiles from sarge or old etch before the migration to Xorg 7?
It has to be either from /etc/profile or ~/.profile or ~/.bash_profile (which might execute ~/.bashrc in some case)
man bash part INVOCATION explains you what file is sourced.

It's one of these files

From the console (ctrl-alt-F1) my path doesn't include anything about '/usr/bin/X11'. Does or could gdm (or something like it) add something to the path just before I use Gnome? Is that possible? I have Xorg - I don't know which version - if that makes a difference...

Exactly
Could be gdm/kdm/xdm or gnome through gconf (I don't really know gconf and gnome).
A few days ago, I switched back to gnome and gnome-noob that I am, I realised that setting the proxy from the gnome menu could affect the environment variable http_proxy. I need a centralized configuration independent of the WM and even without X so I quickly removed it.

No Xorg doesn't set variables afaik.
You can check this by loggin in user and bypass gdm/xdm/..
xinit /usr/bin/xterm -- :0

This starts X without WM and starts xterm.
then try echo $PATH

Actually PAM can also set PATH but I don't use it.

cgjones you could try to find where it's referenced:
Anyway, here /usr/bin/X11 also exist and points to /usr/bin. I got xorg 7 from experimental at the time so did a lot of things manually. I think I removed also the /usr/bin/X11 from the PATH. It doesn't make any harm to have /usr/bin/X11 pointing to /usr/bin and /usr/bin/X11 in the PATH...

Hi,

I had same question a while ago. It may be wrong, but I think,

pam (shadow password suite) handles these basic issues (man 7 pam) and login.defs is referred (man login.defs)

I hope I am correct, if not this post contains incorrect information.

Happy Penguins!

I like that. Made me laugh. Thanks.