login in with a normal user in console mode (outside any graphical desktop environment) sources /etc/profile correctly. In terminals (Konsole, xterm,...) launched inside KDE, /etc/profile appears to never be sourced. gentoo --info Portage 2.1.6.13 (default/linux/x86/10.0/desktop, gcc-4.3.4, glibc-2.9_p20081201-r2, 2.6.31-gentoo-r6 i686) ================================================================= System uname: Linux-2.6.31-gentoo-r6-i686-Intel-R-_Core-TM-2_Duo_CPU_P8700_@_2.53GHz-with-gentoo-2.0.1 Timestamp of tree: Tue, 24 Nov 2009 08:00:01 +0000 ccache version 2.4 [enabled] app-shells/bash: 4.0_p28 dev-java/java-config: 2.1.9-r1 dev-lang/python: 2.6.2-r1 dev-util/ccache: 2.4-r7 dev-util/cmake: 2.6.4-r3 sys-apps/baselayout: 2.0.1 sys-apps/openrc: 0.5.2-r2 sys-apps/sandbox: 1.6-r2 sys-devel/autoconf: 2.13, 2.63-r1 sys-devel/automake: 1.8.5-r3, 1.9.6-r2, 1.10.2 sys-devel/binutils: 2.18-r3 sys-devel/gcc-config: 1.4.1 sys-devel/libtool: 1.5.26 virtual/os-headers: 2.6.27-r2 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" CBUILD="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CFLAGS="-O2 -march=native -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/share/config /var/lib/hsqldb" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/ca-certificates.conf /etc/env.d /etc/env.d/java/ /etc/fonts/fonts.conf /etc/gconf /etc/gentoo-release /etc/php/apache2-php5/ext-active/ /etc/php/cgi-php5/ext-active/ /etc/php/cli-php5/ext-active/ /etc/revdep-rebuild /etc/sandbox.d /etc/terminfo /etc/udev/rules.d" CXXFLAGS="-O2 -march=native -pipe -fomit-frame-pointer" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="ccache distlocks fixpackages parallel-fetch protect-owned sandbox sfperms strict unmerge-orphans userfetch" GENTOO_MIRRORS="http://distfiles.gentoo.org http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/linux/distributions/gentoo" LANG="fr_BE.UTF-8" LDFLAGS="-Wl,-O1" LINGUAS="fr" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_CONFIGROOT="/" PORTAGE_RSYNC_OPTS="--recursive --links --safe-links --perms --times --compress --force --whole-file --delete --stats --timeout=180 --exclude=/distfiles --exclude=/local --exclude=/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="X a52 aac acl acpi alsa bash-completion berkdb bluetooth branding bzip2 cairo cdr cli consolekit cracklib crypt cups dbus dell dri dts dvd dvdr eds emboss encode evo fam firefox flac fortran gdbm gif gpm gstreamer hal iconv jpeg kde laptop ldap libnotify mad mikmod modules mp3 mp4 mpeg mudflap ncurses nls nptl nptlonly ogg opengl openmp pam pcre pdf perl png ppds pppd python qt3support qt4 quicktime readline reflection sdl semantic-desktop session spell spl ssl startup-notification svg sysfs tcpd thunar tiff truetype unicode usb vorbis win32codecs x264 x86 xml xorg xulrunner xv xvid zlib" ALSA_CARDS="ali5451 als4000 atiixp atiixp-modem bt87x ca0106 cmipci emu10k1 emu10k1x ens1370 ens1371 es1938 es1968 fm801 hda-intel intel8x0 intel8x0m maestro3 trident usb-audio via82xx via82xx-modem ymfpci" ALSA_PCM_PLUGINS="adpcm alaw asym copy dmix dshare dsnoop empty extplug file hooks iec958 ioplug ladspa lfloat linear meter mmap_emul mulaw multi null plug rate route share shm softvol" APACHE2_MODULES="actions alias auth_basic authn_alias authn_anon authn_dbm authn_default authn_file authz_dbm authz_default authz_groupfile authz_host authz_owner authz_user autoindex cache dav dav_fs dav_lock deflate dir disk_cache env expires ext_filter file_cache filter headers include info log_config logio mem_cache mime mime_magic negotiation rewrite setenvif speling status unique_id userdir usertrack vhost_alias" ELIBC="glibc" INPUT_DEVICES="keyboard mouse evdev" KERNEL="linux" LCD_DEVICES="bayrad cfontz cfontz633 glk hd44780 lb216 lcdm001 mtxorb ncurses text" LINGUAS="fr" NETBEANS_MODULES="cnd dlight harness ide nb php websvccommon" USERLAND="GNU" VIDEO_CARDS="nvidia" Unset: CPPFLAGS, CTARGET, EMERGE_DEFAULT_OPTS, FFLAGS, INSTALL_MASK, LC_ALL, PORTAGE_COMPRESS, PORTAGE_COMPRESS_FLAGS, PORTAGE_RSYNC_EXTRA_OPTS, PORTDIR_OVERLAY
If you want that, you need something like "source /etc/profile" in .bashrc. You don't seem to realize the difference between system and non-system shells... The difference of .bash_profile and .bashrc
