Thank you to all who have replied. When i had read the man page I missed the part about bash sourcing ~/.bash_profile first for log-in shells only, I took it to be universal. some other responses interspersed below.

Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2010 18:12:06 -0500 From: C Anthony Risinger <anthony@extof.me> Subject: Re: [arch-general] gnome-terminal configuration To: General Discussion about Arch Linux <arch-general@archlinux.org> Message-ID: ><AANLkTilj7lPsMZLZg7XFZnpYhgnqaPyk3MidkPPGqQau@mail.gmail.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1

2010/7/8 Ng Oon-Ee <ngoonee@gmail.com>:

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On Thu, 8 Jul 2010 10:47:03 -0400 <aerospace1028@hotmail.com> wrote:

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<snip> You could also set things in .profile instead? I've read before that

On Thu, 2010-07-08 at 13:00 -0300, Hilton Medeiros wrote: this is the 'proper' way to put env stuff etc.

Most of what I did was create a short ~/.bash_alias file and load it in a ~/.bash_profile, for the time being, moving the three lines of code to ~/.bashrc works. I plan to go through the man page again and review the preference order for .bashrc .profile and .bash_profile.

i could be wrong, as i've heavily customized these scripts, but i believe by default the only thing .bashrc does (in arch) is source .bash_aliases if it exists; so put aliases there.

The default appears to be that .bashrc: checks for an interactive session, sets the prompt and aliases the ls command. .bash_profile: references and loads settings in ~.bashrc Since bash_profile called bashrc, that was where I put my call to bash_alias. For the time being, shifting it over to .bashrc appears to work.

take a look at:

/etc/profile* /etc/bash* ~/.profile ~/.bash*

by default I don't have a ~.profile. Not sure if that's right or not. I originally installed from the speakup modified install CD. Again, thank you to everyone who helped out. It appears my confusion was over the order for .bashrc, .profile and .bash_profile in a log-in vs. non log-in shell. I've got everything working now, but I'll still go back and re-read the appropriate section of the manual for my own interest. _________________________________________________________________ The New Busy think 9 to 5 is a cute idea. Combine multiple calendars with Hotmail. http://www.windowslive.com/campaign/thenewbusy?tile=multicalendar&ocid=PID28326::T:WLMTAGL:ON:WL:en-US:WM_HMP:042010_5