Re: zprofile and .profile sourcing

[Eric Cook <llua@gmx.com>]

On 9/8/22 17:37, Piscium wrote:
> I have been trying (unsuccessfully) to figure out why ~/.profile is
> sourced in some cases and not in others.
>
> I am on Arch Linux, and zsh is my login shell. If I log in to Arch
> over lightdm to a Xfce session, then a variable defined in .profile
> becomes part of my environment. I think this is because in Arch
> /etc/zsh/zprofile has a single statement that calls /etc/profile in sh
> compatibility mode:
> https://github.com/archlinux/svntogit-packages/blob/packages/zsh/trunk/zprofile
>
> And here is /etc/profile:
> https://github.com/archlinux/svntogit-packages/blob/packages/filesystem/trunk/profile
>
> However if within Xfce I log in to a Linux console with Ctrl-Alt-F4;
> or if I log in to a headless (no X, no Wayland) Arch VM in VirtualBox;
> then a variable defined in .profile does not become part of my
> environment. Why?
>
> The Zsh man page says (in different sections):
> "Login shells source /etc/profile followed by $HOME/.profile."
> "If the shell is a login shell, commands are read from
> /etc/zsh/zprofile and then $ZDOTDIR/.zprofile."
>
> ~/ zsh --version
> zsh 5.9 (x86_64-pc-linux-gnu)
>
> What am I missing?
>

One of more possible things around your display manager is happening,

1) not using your login shell to start graphical environment, but does uses a shell that reads .profile
2) it is manually checking for and sourcing it before starting the graphical environment, possibly with or without your login shell
3) something else unrelated to zsh.