[PATCH] Read /etc/environment first to allow changing environment from user profile

[Carlos Sánchez de La Lama]

Hi all,

as reported in bug #22175, lshd does not honor /etc/environment. This
was fixed here:

http://git.savannah.gnu.org/cgit/guix.git/commit/gnu/system.scm?id=2a5f0db4c45679cac6a747a48993fe73982cadca

However, the order in /etc/profile is problematic: some variables are
set up by "$HOME/.guix-profile/etc/profile", but then they get (wrongly)
overriden by the values in /etc/environment. In my case, this happens
with SSL_CERT_DIR, which has the value

/home/csanchez/.guix-profile/etc/ssl/certs:/etc/ssl/certs

then logging in locally, but only

/etc/ssl/certs

when logging in from lshd.

I attach the proposed patch (just a change of order in /etc/profile). As
'cat' and 'cut' ar most surely available at system-level, it should not
be dangerous to use them before setting up the user profile.

BR

Carlos

>From 474e8980ee933e6694cc55ca61607adae86dacf1 Mon Sep 17 00:00:00 2001
From: =?UTF-8?q?Carlos=20S=C3=A1nchez=20de=20La=20Lama?=
 <address@hidden>
Date: Wed, 27 Jul 2016 14:27:00 +0200
Subject: [PATCH] Read /etc/environment first to allow changing environment
 from user profile.

---
 gnu/system.scm | 20 ++++++++++----------
 1 file changed, 10 insertions(+), 10 deletions(-)

diff --git a/gnu/system.scm b/gnu/system.scm
index 476720b..3ae4ae7 100644
--- a/gnu/system.scm
+++ b/gnu/system.scm
@@ -408,6 +408,16 @@ GUIX_PROFILE=/run/current-system/profile \\
 # Prepend setuid programs.
 export PATH=/run/setuid-programs:$PATH
 
+# Since 'lshd' does not use pam_env, /etc/environment must be explicitly
+# loaded when someone logs in via SSH.  See <http://bugs.gnu.org/22175>.
+# We need 'PATH' to be defined here, for 'cat' and 'cut'.
+if [ -f /etc/environment -a -n \"$SSH_CLIENT\" \\
+     -a -z \"$LINUX_MODULE_DIRECTORY\" ]
+then
+  . /etc/environment
+  export `cat /etc/environment | cut -d= -f1`
+fi
+
 if [ -f \"$HOME/.guix-profile/etc/profile\" ]
 then
   # Load the user profile's settings.
@@ -419,16 +429,6 @@ else
   export PATH=\"$HOME/.guix-profile/bin:$PATH\"
 fi
 
-# Since 'lshd' does not use pam_env, /etc/environment must be explicitly
-# loaded when someone logs in via SSH.  See <http://bugs.gnu.org/22175>.
-# We need 'PATH' to be defined here, for 'cat' and 'cut'.
-if [ -f /etc/environment -a -n \"$SSH_CLIENT\" \\
-     -a -z \"$LINUX_MODULE_DIRECTORY\" ]
-then
-  . /etc/environment
-  export `cat /etc/environment | cut -d= -f1`
-fi
-
 # Set the umask, notably for users logging in via 'lsh'.
 # See <http://bugs.gnu.org/22650>.
 umask 022
-- 
2.7.3

-- 
'You did very well, Mr. Netherton,' she said.
'I scarcely did anything.'
'Opportunities to do very badly were manyfold. You avoided them. The major part
in any success.'

William Gibson, "The Peripheral" (2014)