GDM Messing up my environment

[Daniel Lyddy <daniell cs berkeley edu>]

> Hello,
> 
> I have gdm installed on a Mandrake-Linux 7.0 system, from package
> gdm-2.0beta4-3mdk.i586.rpm.  I do not have any KDE packages installed on
> this system, only GNOME.  I have a bunch of environment variables set
> for both bash and tcsh users via the /etc/profile and /etc/csh.cshrc
> config files, but these settings are either being overridden or ignored
> by gdm.  The documentation seems to imply that settings in the file
> /etc/X11/gdm/gdm.conf (for example, DefaultPath) are used by gdm for the
> purposes of login and session startup, but after the user has been
> authorized, shouldn't the system shell config file (and then the user's
> ~/.bashrc or ~/.tcshrc) take over and set up the environment?
> 
> As a result of my environment variables not being correctly read, I
> cannot launch some programs from the GNOME panel or menus.  I can set the $PATH
> variable in gdm.conf using the above mentioned DefaultPath variable, but
> this is not the only environment variable used by some programs.  For
> example, jikes needs the $JIKESPATH variable set, Forte4java needs
> $JAVA_PATH set, etc.  Again, I set all of these in both /etc/profile
> (for bash users) and /etc/csh.cshrc (for tcsh users) but it seems like
> these files are not being read before the user's default window manager
> loads.  As a result, the window manager seems to be operating with a
> different set of variables than an xterm would.
> 
> By the way, I am using gnome (1.0.54) and enlightenment (0.16.3) for my
> own sessions.
> 
> Dan
> 
> PS Sorry if this has been answered before, but I found no reference to
> it in either the PDF document, the README supplied with GDM, or any
> other file I could find.  There doesn't seem to be a FAQ set up for this
> mailing list, or so I was told by gdm-faq sunsite auc dk 
> 
> PPS Is there a simpler way to set up someone's default environment
> independent of the user's preference for shell, window manager, etc?  Do
> most people just hardcode these things in /etc/rc.d/rc.local so that
> they will be loaded by init?
> --
> Daniel Lyddy            daniell cs berkeley edu
> California PATH/UC Berkeley Vision Group
> Richmond Field Station, Building 452
> 1357 S. 46th St, Richmond, CA 94804-4698
> tel: +1 (510) 231-5659  fax: +1 (510) 231-5600
> url: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~daniell
> 
>   ------------------------------------------------------------------------
> 
>   Daniel Lyddy <daniell cs berkeley edu>
>   MSEE
>   UC-Berkeley/California PATH
>   ViVE Lab/ATMIS Group
> 
>   Daniel Lyddy
>   MSEE                                                 <daniell cs berkeley edu>
>   UC-Berkeley/California PATH
>   ViVE Lab/ATMIS Group
>   Richmond Field Station Building 452 1357 S. 46th St  Fax: (+1) 510-231-5600
>   Richmond                                             Work: (+1) 510-231-5659
>   CA                                                   Conference Software Address
>   94804-4698
>   USA
>   Additional Information:
>   Last Name     Lyddy
>   First Name    Daniel
>   Version       2.1

-- 
Daniel Lyddy		daniell cs berkeley edu
California PATH/UC Berkeley Vision Group
Richmond Field Station, Building 452
1357 S. 46th St, Richmond, CA 94804-4698
tel: +1 (510) 231-5659  fax: +1 (510) 231-5600
url: http://www.cs.berkeley.edu/~daniell

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