Score:0

Ubuntu

Opening gnome-terminal and running a command that uses environmental variables from .bashrc

Rolf

3/8/24, 10:07 AM

I am making a .sh file that would be run by Right click -> Run as program by non-power-users. It should open a terminal window and run a docker run command, that uses some environmental variables.

My issue is, I am not able to tell the terminal to load these environmental variables.

I have export VARIABLE=value in .bashrc and tried running

gnome-terminal -- /bin/bash -c "source .bashrc && echo \$VARIABLE && echo $VARIABLE"

but it outputs two empty lines. Interestingly, if I run

gnome-terminal -- /bin/bash -c "cat .bashrc"

it shows the content of the intended .bashrc with VARIABLE in it. How can I solve this? I also tried --rcfile ~/.bashrc, no luck.

120

2 + 0

command-line

bash

gnome-terminal

environment-variables

bashrc

Score:3

Ubuntu

steeldriver

3/8/24, 2:07 PM

The issue here is that bash -c opens a non-interactive shell, and (at least in the case of the default Ubuntu ~/.bashrc, as copied from /etc/skel on account creation), there is this close to the top:

# If not running interactively, don't do anything
case $- in
    *i*) ;;
      *) return;;
esac

So unless you added and exported your VARIABLE before that, it will simply be skipped. You could do either

gnome-terminal -- /bin/bash -ic "source ~/.bashrc && echo \"\$VARIABLE\"; read"

or (simplifying the quoting)

gnome-terminal -- /bin/bash -ic 'source ~/.bashrc && echo "$VARIABLE"; read'

(I added the read to prevent the terminal from exiting with the shell, since my gnome-terminal profile does that by default).

+ 1

Rolf

3/8/24, 3:10 PM

Meanwhile I have also figured this out, thank you, this is the explanation of what's happening! I ended up adding `-i` after fixing the quotation issues, and it works now.

Score:2

Ubuntu

Gunnar Hjalmarsson

3/8/24, 11:19 AM

Programs started from the graphical environment don't see variables in .bashrc. Create [some file name].sh in /etc/profile.d instead and set those variables there.

+ 3

Rolf

3/8/24, 11:35 AM

Do you suggest copying the variables to a separate file in `/etc/profile.d`? Other thing: it seems like they don't even see environmental variables even if they are set, e.g. `gnome-terminal -- bash -c "export VARIABLE=value; echo $VARIABLE;"` doesn't print anything. Is there a reason for this?

Rolf

3/8/24, 11:47 AM

I just realised I should use `'` instead of `"` or use `\$` inside `"` to be taken literally, so please ignore the second sentence.

Gunnar Hjalmarsson

3/8/24, 11:53 AM

@Rolf: Yes, that's my suggestion. Maybe worth a try.

Elon Musk

I sit in a Tesla and translated this thread with Ai:

EN: Opening gnome-terminal and running a command that uses environmental variables from .bashrc

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