Alt-F2 has unique $PATH?

[Jonas Norlander]

2008/6/24 Dotan Cohen <dotancohen at gmail.com>:
> On Kubuntu 8.04 I have ~/.bin/ (note the dot!) configured in my path:
> hardy2 at hardy2-laptop:~$ cat .profile
> # set PATH so it includes user's private bin if it exists
> if [ -d "$HOME/.bin" ] ; then
>    PATH="$HOME/.bin:$PATH"
> fi
> hardy2 at hardy2-laptop:~$ cat .bash_profile
> PATH=$HOME/.bin:$PATH
> export PATH
> hardy2 at hardy2-laptop:~$ which thunderbird
> /home/hardy2/.bin/thunderbird
>
> On my KDE panel, I have a button for Thunderbird which points to this file:
> /home/hardy2/.bin/thunderbird %u
>
> Opening Thunderbird from the button correctly opens the thunderbird
> instance in ~/.bin/ however when typing "thunderbird" into the Alt-F2
> dialog, it opens the thunderbird in /usr/bin/. Why is that, and how
> can I fix it? Do I need to configure my path elsewhere for Alt-F2?
>
> Thanks in advance.
>
> Dotan Cohen
>

Hi

I think it has to do with that ALF-F2 is not a login shell or an
interactive shell so your shell config file (.bash_profile,
.bash_login or .profile) is not sourced.

I was looking briefly into .bash_profile and .profile as a answer for
an other mail and as i understand it bash will not read .profile or
.bash_login if you have a .bash_profile and in Ubuntu they use the
.profile file. So your .profile will not be sourced and in that case
your .bashrc will not be sourced either.
You have to read up on the shell files, look under the INVOCATION
section in the bash man page and perhaps on how KDM is loggin in a
person and what config files it will read.
Let us know if and how you solve it.

/ Jonas