After a clean install of 2004.1 I created a user. There was not a .profile bye default. No problem, I create one. However, it is not read. ~/.profile is not read read either by tty login or by xterm -ls login. user: nwatson:x:1000:100::/home/nwatson:/bin/bash I can work around by altering /etc/profile. Reproducible: Didn't try Steps to Reproduce: 1. 2. 3. valetta root # emerge info Portage 2.0.50-r6 (default-x86-2004.0, gcc-3.3.2, glibc-2.3.2-r9, 2.6.5) ================================================================= System uname: 2.6.5 i686 AMD Duron(tm) Processor Gentoo Base System version 1.4.9 Autoconf: sys-devel/autoconf-2.58-r1 Automake: sys-devel/automake-1.8.3 ACCEPT_KEYWORDS="x86" AUTOCLEAN="yes" CFLAGS="-march=athlon -O3 -pipe" CHOST="i686-pc-linux-gnu" COMPILER="gcc3" CONFIG_PROTECT="/etc /usr/X11R6/lib/X11/xkb /usr/kde/2/share/config /usr/kde/3.2/share/config /usr/kde/3/share/config /usr/share/config /var/qmail/control" CONFIG_PROTECT_MASK="/etc/gconf /etc/terminfo /etc/env.d" CXXFLAGS="-march=athlon -O3 -pipe" DISTDIR="/usr/portage/distfiles" FEATURES="autoaddcvs ccache sandbox" GENTOO_MIRRORS="ftp://gentoo.agsn.ca http://ftp.gentoo.or.kr/ http://gentoo.oregonstate.edu/ http://distro.ibiblio.org/pub/Linux/distributions/gentoo" MAKEOPTS="-j2" PKGDIR="/usr/portage/packages" PORTAGE_TMPDIR="/var/tmp" PORTDIR="/usr/portage" PORTDIR_OVERLAY="" SYNC="rsync://rsync.gentoo.org/gentoo-portage" USE="X alsa apm arts avi berkdb crypt cups encode esd foomaticdb gdbm gif gnome gpm gtk gtk2 imlib java jpeg kde libg++ libwww mad mbox mikmod motif mpeg ncurses nls oggvorbis opengl oss pam pdflib perl png python qt quicktime readline sdl slang spell ssl svga tcltk tcpd truetype video_cards_matrox x86 xinerama xml2 xmms xv zlib"
from the manpage: When bash is invoked as an interactive login shell, or as a non- interactive shell with the --login option, it first reads and exe- cutes commands from the file /etc/profile, if that file exists. After reading that file, it looks for ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login, and ~/.profile, in that order, and reads and exe- cutes commands from the first one that exists and is readable. i'm going to assume that your user has a .bash_profile since that is part of default /etc/skel/
