How to make exported shell variables permanent?

Question

export LD_PRELOAD=/usr/lib/libtsocks.so

It's ok that I can export in this way, but how can I make it permanent? I want LD_PRELOAD to still be changed after a reboot. I'm using Ubuntu and Fedora

Answer 1

Ordinarily, you'd put your "export" line into whatever shell startup file is appropriate: .profile, .bash_profile, .zprofile, whatever, in your $HOME directory.

If you want to make it permanent for every user, the various shells usually have system-wide config files in /etc/: /etc/profile exists on this linux box, but do read the man page to figure out which user-specific and which system-wide file to put it in.

Answer 2

Most distributions also have an /etc/profile.d/ directory containing a group of .sh and .csh files. Creating a new file in this directory tends to keep items better organized and keeps /etc/profile from getting cluttered.