[Bug 955032] Re: pam environment duplicate path directories since it is called without user_readenv=0

[axeoth]

Sorry, I was not very explicit about the underlying cause. It appears on
the link that I gave (http://superuser.com/questions/135730/why-do-i
-get-duplicated-entries-in-my-path), namely in the post (and the answer)
gave by Nick Taylor:

"The problem seems to stem from the fact that pam_env defaults to
reading the user ~/.pam_environment every time it is invoked. A lot of
login methods (cron, lightdm, lightdm-autologin, login, sshd and su on
my machine) invoke pam_env twice: once to read the /etc/environment and
~/.pam_environment files, and once to read the /etc/default/locale file.
In neither case is the user_readenv flag set, so pam_env reads, and acts
on, your ~/.pam_environment twice."

Thank you for taking this issue into consideration. I was wondering if
the parameter "user_readenv=0" could not be put directly into the
/etc/default/locale file.

Anyway, thanks again.

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https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/955032

Title:
  pam environment duplicate path directories since it is called without
  user_readenv=0

Status in “pam” package in Ubuntu:
  Triaged

Bug description:
  I am trying to set my Environment variables through the procedure
  described in:  https://help.ubuntu.com/community/EnvironmentVariables

  (BTW, that page states that ~/.pam_environment: "It is not a script
  file, but rather consists of assignment expressions, one per line.",
  which is misleading since it allows one believe that the syntax is the
  same as of /etc/environment file, which is not tru. ~/.pam_environment
  uses the pam_env.conf syntax, as specified here:
  http://manpages.ubuntu.com/manpages/natty/man5/pam_env.conf.5.html)

  However, back to the bug: basically, I added (prepended) some
  directory to the ${PATH} variable inside my .pam_environment file and
  that folder was duplicated in the final PATH variable.

  The reason is that (see also: http://superuser.com/questions/135730
  /why-do-i-get-duplicated-entries-in-my-path) the user_readenv=0
  parameter is not specified in the lines where pam_env.so is called
  inside *all* the files in /etc/pam.d

  Basically, after creating my .pam_environment file, I had to go inside
  /etc/pam.d and to scan all files and to add the "user_readenv=0"
  parameter to every line where "pam_env.so envfile=/etc/default/locale"
  was encountered.

  For example, in "cron" file, I had to change:

  session       required   pam_env.so envfile=/etc/default/locale

  into:

  session       required   pam_env.so envfile=/etc/default/locale
  user_readenv=0

  and this goes the same for all other files inside /etc/pam.d/ folder
  that contain the line "pam_env.so envfile=/etc/default/locale"

  That's annoying. Please update those files to contain, by default,
  "user_readenv=0", to avoid duplicate folders when setting $PATH
  through the .pam_environment file.

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