7.8. The Bash Shell Startup Files
The shell program /bin/bash (hereafter referred to as
“the shell”) uses a collection
of startup files to help create an environment to run in. Each file
has a specific use and may effect login and interactive environments
differently. The files in the /etc
directory provide global settings. If an equivalent file exists in
the home directory, it may override the global settings.
An interactive login shell is started after a successful login, using
/bin/login, by reading
the /etc/passwd file. An interactive
non-login shell is started at the command-line (e.g., [prompt]$/bin/bash). A non-interactive shell
is usually present when a shell script is running. It is
non-interactive because it is processing a script and not waiting for
user input between commands.
For more information, see info bash - Nodes: Bash Startup Files and Interactive Shells.
The files /etc/profile and ~/.bash_profile are read when the shell is invoked
as an interactive login shell.
A base /etc/profile below sets some
environment variables necessary for native language support. Setting
them properly results in:
-
The output of programs translated into the native language
-
Correct classification of characters into letters, digits and other classes. This is necessary for Bash to properly accept non-ASCII characters in command lines in non-English locales
-
The correct alphabetical sorting order for the country
-
Appropriate default paper size
-
Correct formatting of monetary, time, and date values
Replace [ll] below with the
two-letter code for the desired language (e.g., “en”) and [CC] with the two-letter code for the
appropriate country (e.g., “GB”). It may also be necessary to specify (and
this is actually the preferred form) the character encoding (e.g.
“iso8859-1”) after a dot (so
that the result is “en_GB.iso8859-1”). Issue the following command
for more information:
man 3 setlocale
The list of all locales supported by Glibc can be obtained by running the following command:
locale -a
Once the proper locale settings have been determined, create the
/etc/profile file. This will overwrite
the one made at the beginning of chapter 6:
cat > /etc/profile << "EOF"
# Begin /etc/profile
export LANG=[ll]_[CC]
# End /etc/profile
EOF
![[Note]](../images/note.png)
Note
The “C” (default) and “en_US” (the recommended one for United States English users) locales are different.
Setting the keyboard layout, screen font, and locale-related environment variables are the only internationalization steps needed to support locales that use ordinary single-byte encodings and left-to-right writing direction. More complex cases (including UTF-8 based locales) require additional steps and additional patches because many applications tend to not work properly under such conditions. These steps and patches are not included in the HLFS book and such locales are not supported by HLFS in any way.