[The Computer Kid] /etc/profile not being applied by LightDM

[Conrad Sykes]

A problem I ran into recently after switching from GDM to LightDM was that /etc/profile was no longer being applied when a user logged in. This meant that the startup settings I had set in /etc/profile were no longer being applied at login; and when a user would start a shell the path wasn't being affected by /etc/profile either. The  reason for this is that LightDM no longer applies /etc/profile but fortunately fixing this is fairly simple.

Instead of relying on LightDM to handle /etc/profile we are going to go a level deeper and have the X11 windows manager do the work. To do this we will sym link /etc/profile into the X11 Xsession.d folder which contains scripts that are applied anytime an Xsession is started. To do this open a terminal and run the following command

sudo ln -s /etc/profile /etc/X11/Xsession.d/10x11-common_profile

Now restart the computer for the changes to take effect. From now on any changes you make to /etc/profile will automatically be applied. Problem Solved! 

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Posted By Conrad Sykes to The Computer Kid at 7/03/2013 10:41:00 PM