[arch-general] Setting global environment variable

[Ty John]

On Mon, 1 Feb 2010 17:13:55 -0500
Daenyth Blank <daenyth+arch at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Feb 1, 2010 at 17:11, Ty John <ty-ml at eye-of-odin.com> wrote:
> > Basically, I want to set and unset the variable when I connect and
> > disconnect the VPN.
> 
> The best way is probably to have a set of aliases in your bashrc that
> run it and set the variables. Scripts  and functions cannpt modify the
> calling environment.

Taking another look at this. It doesn't really work the way I had
hoped. I can set the $http_proxy variable when connecting to the VPN
but the variable is only valid from the bash shell it was called from.
Is there no way to make existing processes acknowledge the variable?

The main idea behind this is so that I can leave my browser running
whether I'm connected to the VPN or not. Currently I have firefox with
setup to connect to the proxy and I use another browser whenever I'm
not connected (rather than changing the firefox network settings
everytime).