[gentoo-user] $PATH under GNOME/Wayland

[gentoo-user] $PATH under GNOME/Wayland

[Jishnu Kaiwar]

Hi! I was just wondering how those of you who use GNOME and wayland are
setting a session wide $PATH and more broadly any environment
variable. I used to source ~/.profile in ~/.xession before this.

I tried $HOME/.pam_environment on the wiki's recommendation [1] with the
syntax from pam_env.conf(5) but this didn't set the variables at all
(tested with a simple echo $GOPATH, echo $PATH).

It seems Arch Linux's wiki claims that this is not read anymore [2], so
I tried their suggested method of using systemd user environment
variables based on environment.d(5). Here I had some success in setting
some environment variables such as $GOPATH, but it did not change the
$PATH as I desired; systemctl --user reload-daemon and show-environment
to verify. This is odd because the man page has setting $PATH as an
example.

Has anybody else run into this issue? If so what do you do instead. I am
now sourcing ~/.profile from my ~/.bashrc but this seems not perfectly
"correct".

Cheers!
Jishnu

[1] https://wiki.gentoo.org/wiki/Knowledge_Base:Configuring_environment_variables
[2] https://wiki.archlinux.org/title/Environment_variables#Using_pam_env

Re: [gentoo-user] $PATH under GNOME/Wayland

[Alexis]

Jishnu Kaiwar <jishnukaiwar@gmail.com> writes:

> I tried $HOME/.pam_environment on the wiki's recommendation [1] 
> with
> the
> syntax from pam_env.conf(5) but this didn't set the variables at 
> all
> (tested with a simple echo $GOPATH, echo $PATH).
>
> It seems Arch Linux's wiki claims that this is not read anymore 
> [2],

In any case, the pam_env(8) man page says that user environment 
files are not only deprecated, but:

> will be removed completely at some point in the future.

So once this discussion has determined the appropriate 
alternative, i'll update that Knowledge Base page on the Gentoo 
wiki accordingly.

> I tried their suggested method of using systemd user environment
> variables based on environment.d(5). Here I had some success in 
> setting
> some environment variables such as $GOPATH, but it did not 
> change the
> $PATH as I desired; systemctl --user reload-daemon and 
> show-environment
> to verify. This is odd because the man page has setting $PATH as 
> an
> example.
>
> Has anybody else run into this issue? If so what do you do 
> instead. I
> am
> now sourcing ~/.profile from my ~/.bashrc but this seems not 
> perfectly
> "correct".

Well, one factor: are you using a display manager, like GDM? Or 
are you starting your GNOME session from the console?

(i might not be able to offer any help, as i use OpenRC, not 
systemd, and don't use a display manager - over time i've found 
them to be more trouble than they're worth for my use-case. i 
start my Wayland sessions - previously Sway, currently Wayfire - 
from the console, and i set the environment for my login session, 
including PATH, in ~/.zprofile, Zsh's equivalent of 
~/.bash_profile.)


Alexis.

Re: [gentoo-user] $PATH under GNOME/Wayland

[Jishnu Kaiwar]

Alexis <flexibeast@gmail.com> writes:
> In any case, the pam_env(8) man page says that user environment files
> are not only deprecated, but:
>
>> will be removed completely at some point in the future.

Okay this explains it :)


> Well, one factor: are you using a display manager, like GDM? Or are
> you starting your GNOME session from the console?


> (i might not be able to offer any help, as i use OpenRC, not systemd,
> and don't use a display manager - over time i've found them to be more
> trouble than they're worth for my use-case. i start my Wayland
> sessions - previously Sway, currently Wayfire - from the console, and
> i set the environment for my login session, including PATH, in
> ~/.zprofile, Zsh's equivalent of ~/.bash_profile.)

I am starting GNOME by having the gdm systemd service enbaled. Thanks
for sharing your setup though.

I suspect that since PATH is the only variable I tested that is set
elsewhere, the reason that it in particular is not being set may have to
do with order of operations. I later tried to set EDITOR this way but
systemctl --user show-environment after a daemon-reload gave me that
EDITOR was the default /bin/nano.

Best,
Jishnu