[arch-general] chsh, linux32 and $PATH

[Dan McGee]

On Sun, Jan 24, 2010 at 7:49 PM, Allan McRae <allan at archlinux.org> wrote:
> I am trying to seamlessly run an x86_64 kernel on my i686 machine.  I have
> enough aliases that most things work right (prefixing with linux32), but
> bash can not handle setting e.g. "./configure" as an alias and there is
> always something I have missed.
>
> So, I came up with a cunning plan...  Create a script /bin/bash32 which just
> runs "linux32 /bin/bash", then add /bin/bash32 to /etc/shells and run "chsh
> -s /bin/bash32".
>
> It works in a way...   when I run uname, it tells me I am using the i686
> kernel.  Success!    Now the bad part... my $PATH gets reduced to:
>
> /home/allan/bin:/bin:/usr/bin
>
> The /home/allan/bin part tells me that my ~/.bashrc is being sourced, as
> does my prompt and all my aliases.   So something else is being missed.
> The /bin:/usr/bin is the minimum path defined in /etc/login.defs.
>
> All the rest is in /etc/profile and the various /etc/profile.d scripts.  Why
> are they not being sourced...   Or are they being sourced and then I open up
> a new shell with my script which gets rid of them?

You probably want a login shell, e.g. /bin/bash -l