(OT) path_helper [was Re: Xterm not reading dotfiles]
(OT) path_helper [was Re: Xterm not reading dotfiles]
- Subject: (OT) path_helper [was Re: Xterm not reading dotfiles]
- From: "Andrew J. Hesford" <email@hidden>
- Date: Sun, 18 Nov 2007 10:17:31 -0600
On Nov 18, 2007, at 10:03 AM, Merton Campbell Crockett wrote:
On 18 Nov 2007, at 07:29:05, Andrew J. Hesford wrote:
Funny you should mention this. I don't ordinarily use bash, but I
do use the LaTeXiT program, which tends to hang in Leopard when it
attempts to compile code. After some poking around, I discovered
that it was compiling the code by execing a bash login shell to run
the commands it needed. This was the culprit.
For some reason, when bash is invoked in this manner, it calls the
path_helper script, which locks everything up. If you remove the
call to path_helper in /etc/profile, and set your path manually,
you might find that bash --login does not freeze.
Interesting. During the past week, I noticed that /bin/sh invoked /
bin/bash. This resulted in /etc/bashrc, ~/.bash_profile, and /etc/
profile being read and used but not ~/.profile.
As relatively few people other than myself use the system, I moved
my $PATH modifications to /etc/profile. Even here I encountered a
problem with my "export PATH" statement: It wouldn't include all of
the elements in the path if the $PATH element wasn't the last
element in the new PATH.
I did some fooling around with bash again. I wanted /usr/libexec/
path_helper to work, even if I'm using LaTeXiT. It turns out there is
an issue with pre-set paths when calling path_helper from bash. If I
set a short default path BEFORE bash calls path_helper, everything
works. But having bash inherit my path before running the script
causes havoc. I'm going to get to the bottom of this and hopefully get
a fix to Apple...
--
Andrew J. Hesford <email@hidden>
Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering
University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
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