[26807] in Athena Bugs
linux 9.4.21: bash
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Anders Kaseorg)
Wed Apr 5 16:21:47 2006
Message-Id: <200604052019.k35KJeiK011657@cs13.mit.edu>
To: bugs@mit.edu
Date: Wed, 05 Apr 2006 16:19:40 -0400
From: Anders Kaseorg <andersk@mit.edu>
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System name: cs13.mit.edu
Type and version: i686 9.4.21
Display type: nVidia Corporation NV15 [GeForce2 GTS/Pro] (rev a4)
Shell: /bin/athena/bash
Window manager: metacity
What were you trying to do?
The default .bashrc incorrectly sets $HOME to the current
directory in undesired situations. One way to reproduce the
problem is to launch another gnome-terminal from a directory
other than $HOME. For example,
$ cd Public
$ gnome-terminal &
What's wrong:
The $HOME variable is incorrectly set to the current
directory. This breaks everything: dotfiles don't run,
programs don't find their configuration files, etc.
$ echo $HOME
/afs/athena.mit.edu/user/a/n/andersk/Public
What should have happened:
$HOME should remain the same.
$ echo $HOME
/afs/athena.mit.edu/user/a/n/andersk
Please describe any relevant documentation references:
Lines 117-132 of /usr/athena/lib/init/bashrc assume that "this
code is being invoked only at the beginning of the session";
apparently, this assumption is wrong.
This is easily fixed by replacing x=`/bin/pwd` with
x=`readlink "$HOME"`.
