Virtual Terminals

[Kenneth Herron]

woods at eci386.uucp (Greg A. Woods) writes:

>In article <1990Oct29.000407.13391 at mccc.uucp> pjh at mccc.uucp (Pete Holsberg) writes:
>> However, when I invoke a new virtual terminal -- either with the hot key
>> or via 'newvt' -- the shell in the new VT does not execute /etc/profile
>> and it does not execute $HOME/.profile!  It *does* execute /etc/env and
>> $HOME/.env!

>I'm not sure how it really works, but I would assume the new shell is
>a child of newvt, thus inherits your current environment.  If ksh is
>executing $ENV, then you should have an identical working environment,
>as well as identical environment variables.

The new shell isn't a login shell, so it's not appropriate for it to
run /etc/profile or .profile.

I've always assumed without checking that shells started with vtlmgr use
the environment that existed when vtlmgr was run, and that newvt'd shells
use the current environment.

If you add the line "ALTSHELL=YES" to /etc/default/login then newvt and
vtlmgr will exec whatever your SHELL variable is set to.

Kenneth Herron