Functions in system init scripts

Functions in system init scripts

[Daniel Qarras]

Hi all,

I guess this an age old problem but it bit me again after few years hiatus. Probably most compactly described by this screenshot from gnome-terminal:

localhost:~> cat /etc/profile.d/functest.sh
functest ()
{
  echo function functest defined
}
FUNCVAR=1
export FUNCVAR
localhost:~> echo $FUNCVAR
1
localhost:~> which functest
functest not found
zsh: exit 1
localhost:~> . /etc/profile.d/functest.sh
localhost:~> which functest              
functest () {
	echo function functest defined
}

What happens here is that some applications install their initialization scripts under /etc/profile.d and those get sourced via /etc/profile when a user logins (and /etc/profile is sourced by /etc/zprofile). With console sessions or ssh connections all is good.

When a user is logging via a display manager like GDM, the function definitions get "lost" as only zshenv/.zshenv/zshrc/.zshrc are getting sourced when an xterm / gnome-terminal is launched. zprofile/.zprofile are sourced during the login but only environment variable setting survive till xterm/gnome-terminal.

So the question is what would be the most optimal way to fix this? Some distributions' zsh package (e.g., Red Hat's) actually source init scripts under /etc/profile.d *twice* but that raises new problems as then a user will have hard time to override some settings in his own init scripts (and it just feel broken to do something like that twice in any case).

Thanks!



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Re: Functions in system init scripts

[Jan Hülsbergen]

Hi Daniel,

On Fri, Oct 17, 2008 at 22:17, Daniel Qarras <dqarras@yahoo.com> wrote:
> What happens here is that some applications install their initialization scripts under /etc/profile.d and those get sourced via /etc/profile when a user logins (and /etc/profile is sourced by /etc/zprofile). With console sessions or ssh connections all is good.
>
> When a user is logging via a display manager like GDM, the function definitions get "lost" as only zshenv/.zshenv/zshrc/.zshrc are getting sourced when an xterm / gnome-terminal is launched. zprofile/.zprofile are sourced during the login but only environment variable setting survive till xterm/gnome-terminal.
>
> So the question is what would be the most optimal way to fix this? Some distributions' zsh package (e.g., Red Hat's) actually source init scripts under /etc/profile.d *twice* but that raises new problems as then a user will have hard time to override some settings in his own init scripts (and it just feel broken to do something like that twice in any case).

One way to fix this is to make your terminal emulator execute the
shells as login shells (gnome-terminal can do that IIRC).

Another way would be to *only* source /etc/profile in your zshrc as
this file gets executed for any interactive shell, login or not.

HTH
Jan

Re: Functions in system init scripts

[Daniel Qarras]

Hi!

> > When a user is logging via a display manager like GDM,
> the function definitions get "lost" as only
> zshenv/.zshenv/zshrc/.zshrc are getting sourced when an
> xterm / gnome-terminal is launched. zprofile/.zprofile are
> sourced during the login but only environment variable
> setting survive till xterm/gnome-terminal.
> 
> One way to fix this is to make your terminal emulator
> execute the shells as login shells (gnome-terminal can do that IIRC).

True, thanks for the tip (although this doesn't sound optimal as xterm would still be unfixed).

> Another way would be to *only* source /etc/profile in your
> zshrc as this file gets executed for any interactive shell, login
> or not.

Yeah, I guess this is more or less the only option; the side-effect is that one needs to move stuff from zprofile/.zprofile to zshrc/.zshrc in order to be able to override system settings (e.g., locale settings). This is perhaps bit contradicting of how many view the division between different zsh init files.

Cheers!



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Re: Functions in system init scripts

[Clint Adams]

On Sun, Oct 19, 2008 at 11:10:31AM -0700, Daniel Qarras wrote:
> True, thanks for the tip (although this doesn't sound optimal as xterm would still be unfixed).

You can cause xterm to launch login shells either by command-line switch
or by X resource.

Re: Functions in system init scripts

[Bart Schaefer]

On Oct 19, 11:10am, Daniel Qarras wrote:
}
} > One way to fix this is to make your terminal emulator
} > execute the shells as login shells (gnome-terminal can do that IIRC).
} 
} True, thanks for the tip (although this doesn't sound optimal as xterm
} would still be unfixed).

You can also put something like this in your ~/.zshenv file:

# Force most interactive shells to be login shells
[[ -t 0 && -o interactive && -o shinstdin ]] && setopt login

You can add a test for various values of $TERM, etc., as needed.