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I'm trying to understand a user login process on Centos 7 and I've gotten a bit confused trying to figure out when/how a Gnome terminal session defines environment variables (Gnome 3.14.4).

As near as I can tell.... a Gnome terminal will only define environment variables from the /etc/profile, ~/.profile, or ~/.bash_profile if the variables were exported in those scripts.

If they aren't exported then they don't appear in the output of either the set or printenv commands. The /etc/environment file is the exception (but it's not a shell login script).

The only thing I've found that looks like it would do this is the /etc/X11/xinit/xinitrc-common file when it sources the ~/.profile login script... But that's just a single login script and doesn't explain why exported variables in /etc/profile & ~!/.bash_profile are being displayed in set.

[ -r $HOME/.profile ] && . $HOME/.profile

If this reads the variables in the ~/.profile script... How are the variables being read for /etc/profile & ~/.bash_profile? If it matters.... I haven't selected "run command as login script"

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  • Can you edit your question and add your ~/.bash_profile and ~/.bashrc?
    – Kevin Lemaire
    Dec 21, 2017 at 15:42

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I believe the Gnome Terminal runs bash (the GNU Bourne Again SHell) by default.

Actually it probably runs whatever shell is specified for your account in /etc/passwd

On startup bash goes through ~/.profile and ~/.bash_profile, that's why those variables get set.

So to recap: when you start Gnome Terminal, it starts your shell, and your shell goes through these scripts setting the environment variables.

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  • It runs whatever is specified by the SHELL environment variable.
    – JdeBP
    Dec 21, 2017 at 17:22

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