My problem is that the environment variables, PATH most obviously, are not being set as I think they should be. Further, I have observed some behavior I don't understand.

I boot into run level 4, which brings me to the gdm login screen. I login as a normal user, carl, and open an xterm window on the desktop. To keep matters simple, I have no .bashrc or .bash_profile or .profile in my /home/carl directory. So, shouldn't I expect my PATH variable to be as it is set in /etc/profile? Well, it's not.

So I do a whoami and I get carl.

I echo $PATH and I get a very short path (which is missing a lot of directories I'd like to have), not the path that is set in /etc/profile.

I su - carl and login.

I do a whoami and I get carl.

I echo $PATH and I get the string I would expect to see, as set in /etc/profile.

So, it seems when I login via gdm the PATH variable is getting assigned from somewhere else than /etc/profile. Any ideas where?

I know I can probably solve the problem by customizing a .bashrc in my ~ directory, but I'd like to get to the bottom of what is happening now and why.

Any ideas?

My PS1 (prompt string) also behaves similarly, so it's not just something affecting the PATH variable.