Re: A .profile puzzle

[Gene Heskett]

On Saturday 23 October 2021 22:00:42 piorunz wrote:

> On 17/10/2021 17:18, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > The local electrical system, while better than Haiti's is getting to
> > be a nuisance with 5 second power failures about weekly, or is that
> > weakly? (...)
> > I made some mods to a 3d printer project in openscad last week,
> > printed it, but forgot to save it. So I lost it when the latest
> > failure rebooted that machine.
>
> With all due respect, you should know that UPS to power up one
> computer for an hour cost £150 on eBay, or even £70 if you can buy
> used and/or replace batteries yourself etc, as I did. Just buy that
> and begone will be all reboots due to flaky electric, forever.
>
Not forever, only as long aa the batteries last. And 95% of the ups's 
seriously overcharge their batteries just to burn them up in 2 or 3 
years. All to get an extra 10% runtime they can advertise.  Ask ma bell 
how long those racks of big, glass tanked lead acid batteries in the 
back room that power your local phone company, last.  Some of them are 
now more than 70 years old and still as good as new. The secret is the 
correct charge as measured by the SG of the acid in them. You cannot of 
course meaure a gell cell that way, the only thing you can do is quit 
charging them when you stop the charge and measure the tempurature 
sensitive volts, or in the case of a maintenance charger, reduce it over 
time until arriving at a voltage that results in a charge current below 
that which produces gas.

An experiment I did back in the 70's at a tv station with a 335 commings 
engine spinning a 150 kw alternator, which could run the transmitter at 
about 40% power since it was a twin klystron transmitter needing nearly 
300 kwh for full power. When I walked in the door in '69 the starter 
batteries were about 2 years old and about burned up since the 
maintenance charger was a 20 amp gas station type with a 50 ohm current 
limiter, no smarts at all. 3 months later they didn't have what it took 
when those 2 big 225 ah truck batteries were switched to 24 volts to 
start that cummings.  So I cut a P.O. and went to Norfolk and bought two 
new batteries. And put a 2200 ohm current limiter in circuit to replace 
the 50 which was litterally boiling the batteries. 2 weeks later they 
were still warm and gassing so I changed the resistor to 4.7k ohms. 
Another week and I'd put a 10k in. SG 2 weeks later was nearly 1.28, 
still too high, 3 or 4 months later the resistor had been raised to 47k, 
the charging current was then less than 5 milliamps, the SG was still a 
bit high at 1.27, but the gassing was close to stopped. 8 years later, 
when I headed on down the road to an office door that said Chief 
Engineer with my name on it, those two 8 yo batteries were still turning 
that cum-along 335 everything but wrong side out starting it for its 
weekly exercise 15 minute run. The start relays closed, the bendix 
slammed into the flywheel, the first cylinder to hit tdc fired and about 
a second later the governor hit 1800 rpm and throttled it. All in about 
1 short second, and the batteries were then 8 years old. That was in 
1977,  45 years ago, maybe they are still there, I haven't checked. 

While I was there, the alternator on my wagon failed and I got a 120 amp 
version off a wrecked ambulance and built my own voltage regulator, 
putting in 4 or 5 times the tempcomp that factory regulators give. Kept 
a 600 cranking amp battery at around 1.265 SG. No gassing, no water 
loss, started a 348 pumpjack in -30F weather like it was summertime. The 
wild tempcomp put that alternator wide open for around a minute after 
starting but the headlights were a little bright. W/O adding any water, 
that alternator, regulator and battery were moved to the next 3 wagons I 
bought while living there. So I think I know a bit about Lead acid 
batteries.

But the little cyberpower 650 I put on the rpi4 doesn't see a very much 
measurable load, so if the standby doesn't start, it dumps the power to 
the pi 2 minutes after I pull the plug, bummer & hard on the pi. Idiotic 
even. from upsc myups:

ups.delay.shutdown: 120
ups.delay.start: 0
ups.load: 8

8 watts to run the pi and its interfacing, and the 120 seconds to 
shutdown is not adjustable.

IMO I got took. OTOH it was only 40 bucks. shrug. The 20kw standby is up 
and running in about 4 seconds, so the 120 does cover it.

--< there is no space here Piotr, so your sig gets copied in the quote, 
put a space after the -- and your sig will, or should, disappear in 
replies from others to your posts.

> With kindest regards, Piotr.
>
> ⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
> ⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Debian - The universal operating system
> ⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://www.debian.org
> ⠈⠳⣄

Thank you Piotr.

Cheers, Gene Heskett.
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis 

Re: A .profile puzzle

[piorunz]

On 17/10/2021 17:18, Gene Heskett wrote:

The local electrical system, while better than Haiti's is getting to be a
nuisance with 5 second power failures about weekly, or is that weakly?
(...)
I made some mods to a 3d printer project in openscad last week, printed
it, but forgot to save it. So I lost it when the latest failure rebooted
that machine.


With all due respect, you should know that UPS to power up one computer
for an hour cost £150 on eBay, or even £70 if you can buy used and/or
replace batteries yourself etc, as I did. Just buy that and begone will
be all reboots due to flaky electric, forever.

--
With kindest regards, Piotr.

⢀⣴⠾⠻⢶⣦⠀
⣾⠁⢠⠒⠀⣿⡁ Debian - The universal operating system
⢿⡄⠘⠷⠚⠋⠀ https://www.debian.org
⠈⠳⣄

Re: A .profile puzzle

[mick crane]

On 2021-10-17 19:09, Greg Wooledge wrote:

On Sun, Oct 17, 2021 at 06:35:01PM +0200, deloptes wrote:

> 2. and another pesky thing is starting a konsole to do work, needs a
> $PATH modification that we used to put in ~.profile. But opening a
> terminal hasn't called a ". .profile" since about jessie.  So thats
> another PITA.
>
> So, what has replaced .profile as the function for such as that in recent
> releases?

AFAIK bash is not reading profile when you login, but not sure - it 
could be

also that it is not a login shell.
AFAIK you should open the terminal with "bash --login" to read the 
profile.

So try in the terminal "bash --login"

I have put in my .profile

alias bash='bash --login'

long time ago


OK, first thing first: that alias won't do *anything* useful.  If Gene
is talking about starting a terminal from his window manager or desktop
environment, that terminal is going to run $SHELL which is /bin/bash.
It will not look at his aliases, no matter where they're defined.  It's
just going to run bash.  Not "bash --login".

Now let's step back a bit.

When you run an instance of a shell, there are two ways you can do it.
You either run a "login shell", or a "non-login shell".

The purpose of a login shell is to be executed when you login.  That's
the original intent.  Back in the 70s and 80s, there was no such thing
as a "desktop".  There was just the shell.  You logged in by connecting
your terminal or your modem to the host system, and getting a textual
prompt.  After authentication, you were "logged in", and the system 
would

run your account's shell with a "-" character in front of it.  This is
the ancient way that your system said "this should be a login shell, 
not

a regular shell".

It looks like this:

unicorn:~$ ps -ft tty1
UID  PIDPPID  C STIME TTY  TIME CMD
root 699   1  0 Oct09 tty1 00:00:00 /bin/login -p --
greg 851 699  0 Oct09 tty1 00:00:00 -bash
greg 863 851  0 Oct09 tty1 00:00:00 /bin/sh 
/usr/bin/startx

[...]

See where it says "-bash"?  That's my login shell.

The purpose of having a "login shell" and a "regular shell" is because
you probably have some things that you need to do once per session,
when you login.  Like, setting up your environment variables.  Or
printing today's calendar, or today's message from the administration.
All of those things are unnecessary in a regular shell.  The 
environment
is already set up, and you've already seen today's calendar or 
whatever.


Any other time you started a shell, it would not have a "-" in front of 
its

name, so it would be a regular shell.  This included shell escapes from
your text editor or mail reader or news reader or pager.  Any time you
escaped to a new shell from inside your editor, you didn't need to go
through all the gyrations that a login shell did.  You don't want to
see the calendar again, etc.

A decade or two later, some people developed a windowing system.

In this windowing system, there's a terminal emulator.  Normally when 
you

run a terminal emulator, you run a shell inside it.  (Not always, but
usually.)  This shell doesn't need to be a login shell.  You're 
probably
going to open half a dozen terminal emulators with shells in them, 
maybe

more.  You don't need to run the day's calendar, or set up the session
environment, in every single terminal.  All of that has been taken care
of already.  (Right?)

So, in an X terminal emulator, you normally run a NON-login shell.  
Just

a regular shell.

That's how it's supposed to work.

However.

Some people found that they had a really hard time getting their 
initial
environment set up during their X logins.  This was common among 
newbies

especially, because they didn't understand the new login procedure, and
had no idea how to customize it.

And where did we have a shit-load of Unix newbies?  Universities.

So, in the world of academia, there is a whole different paradigm.  In
this world, where everyone is expected to be incompetent, the old way
of setting up your environment one time and inheriting it in every
shell... that doesn't work.

In the newbie-centric environment, where nobody knows how to do 
anything

correctly, terminal emulators are configured to run login shells.

There's an option for it, of course.  The people who wrote xterm 
realized

that one might wish to run either a regular shell or a login shell.  So
xterm has this option:

   -ls This option indicates that the shell that is started in 
the
   xterm window will be a login shell (i.e., the first 
character
   of argv[0] will be a dash, indicating to the shell that 
it

   should read the user's .login or .profile).

Universities configured things so that their users' terminals would all
run with this option, which means the users would get a login shell in
each terminal.

And then the users, who were all newbies and don't know any better, 
could

simply be told "if you 

Re: A .profile puzzle

[David Wright]

On Sun 17 Oct 2021 at 17:36:19 (+), Andrew M.A. Cater wrote:
> On Sun, Oct 17, 2021 at 01:23:34PM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > On Sunday 17 October 2021 12:35:01 deloptes wrote:
> > 
> > > Gene Heskett wrote:
> > > > 1. Before the latest failure I could do all this as me because the
> > > > mount point for the card is in my home directory, I own it all. And
> > > > didn't have to be root to do any of it.  This was not fixed by a 2nd
> > > > reboot.
> > >
> > > I guess this problem is not related to the .profile issue you are
> > > having below.
> > 
> > Agreed.
> > 
> > > Check the permissions on the mount point
> > 
> > done, I still own it.

"done" doesn't quite cover it. We don't know whether something was
mounted on the mount point (which means that the ownership/permissions
apply to the something, not to the mount point), or not (in which case
you see the ownership/permissions of the mount point itself). You made
this error back in February.

> > > and the fstab
> > 
> > its not in fstab, never was.

Which suggests that the real mount point ownership/permissions will be
important.

> > I touched a file in 
> > home/gene/Downloads/3dp.stf named sdb1 to create a mount I didn't have 
> > to search thru /media to access.
> > 
> 
> What on EARTH? This is a very [s]trange way to do this, I think.

Yes, no idea what all that is about.

> Either put it in fstab at which point it will alwsays be found or learn
> where it's mounted under /media - which will be consistent, maybe? 
> Interestingly,mounting an SD card that fits an SD card slot gave me one path, 
> a micro-SDin a holder gave me another but they were always consistent.

My own experience is that the ID (/dev/disk/by-id) varies by what the SD
is pushed into, whereas the Path (/dev/disk/by-path) varies by the PC's
socket that it's plugged into (which could of course be the same).

So any card that's pushed into an SD→USB holder will get the ID of
the holder, but its Path will depend on the USB socket plugged into.

In the absence of any more specific information (ie, a known LABEL or
UUID), I configure fstab to mount the device on /media/slot or
/media/white as appropriate. I find that the easiest way to avoid
confusing two "foreign" SD cards. (The holder is white.)

I assume that microSD→SD converters are passive, as they all behave
as effectively "invisible". I'm not sure how I would test this,
though, because the only microSD slots I have are in mobile phones
and Rokus etc.

> > Up until this 5 second power failure, I could, as me, mount that SD card 
> > there, and use mc, as me, to overwrite a file on that card, then sync; 
> > eject sdb1. Led on card adapter goes out, pull the card, take it back to 
> > the printer and select and print the updated file.  Now I have to be 
> > root to do any of it except the printer. The card is vfat, which has no 
> > concept of file ownership.

Not intrinsically, but ownership/permissions can be imposed upon
mounting it (uid,gid,umask,fmask,dmask).

I think you were using usbmount at one time, and also that you were
having problems with undesired automounting, but I haven't looked
back for details, as I think your configuration is probably too
different from mine for me to be any help with this specific power
outage symptom.

> > > The SD card might also need a fsck.
> > 
> > by whose fsck?
> 
> Make sure it's not mounted, then fsck the device. Probably dosfstools is
> needed.

In my experience, cards and sticks that want a fsck just emit a
message in the logs, rather than refusing to be mounted:

  FAT-fs (sdc1): Volume was not properly unmounted. Some data may be corrupt. 
Please run fsck.

That may differ with gross corruption, but I'd expect a lot more noise
in the logs, were that the case.

> > > > 2. and another pesky thing is starting a konsole to do work, needs a
> > > > $PATH modification that we used to put in ~.profile. But opening a
> > > > terminal hasn't called a ". .profile" since about jessie.  So thats
> > > > another PITA.
> > > >
> > > > So, what has replaced .profile as the function for such as that in
> > > > recent releases?
> > >
> > > AFAIK bash is not reading profile when you login, but not sure - it
> > > could be also that it is not a login shell.
> > 
> > XFCe login, I think. I only see it once on that machine. logging in 
> > remotely with "ssh -Y machine-name" or 'user1000'@machine-name is how I 
> > generally run things from a comfy chair.
> > 
> > > AFAIK you should open the terminal with "bash --login" to read the
> > > profile. So try in the terminal "bash --login"

Perhaps start at https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2020/08/msg00196.html
and work up the thread. That might answer thing (2.), and could even
suggest why a power outage followed by a reboot could change things,
if you'd altered the configuration since the last boot.

Cheers,
David.

Re: A .profile puzzle

[David Wright]

On Mon 18 Oct 2021 at 09:44:28 (-0400), Greg Wooledge wrote:
> On Mon, Oct 18, 2021 at 08:56:47AM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > On Monday 18 October 2021 07:17:05 Greg Wooledge wrote:
> > > On Mon, Oct 18, 2021 at 01:42:43AM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > > > On Monday 18 October 2021 01:12:42 Will Mengarini wrote:
> > > > > * Gene Heskett  [21-10/17=Su 12:18 -0400]:
> > > > > > [...] opening a terminal hasn't called
> > > > > > a ". .profile" since about jessie [...]
> > > > >
> > > > > Check whether you *also* have either .bash_profile or
> > > > > .bash_login, because either of those supersedes .profile:
> > > > >
> > > > > ls -lA ~/.bash_{profile,login}
> > > >
> > > > Neither present, just .bashrc, and .bash_logout
> > >
> > > That's as expected, then.  Your .profile is not being read *now*
> > > because it's not supposed to be, if you use a Display Manager to
> > > login.
> > >
> > > Your .profile *used* to be read by terminals, because previously, your
> > > terminals had been configured to run login shells.  However, I'd bet
> > > it was *not* read by your session, meaning any changes to the
> > > environment would not be seen by graphical applications that you
> > > launched directly from your Desktop or your WM, without going through
> > > a terminal.
> > >
> > > Assuming you run a Debian X11 Session via a Display Manager, and also
> > > assuming you don't have a .xsession file, you probably want to
> > > configure your environment in ~/.xsessionrc (note the "rc" on the
> > > end).
> > 
> > That does not exist on that machine. I'll look into it a bit later, 
> > thanks Greg.
> 
> Create it.  Now it exists.  Tada!

You *just* got done saying all this stuff last week^H^H^H^Hyear.

https://lists.debian.org/debian-user/2020/08/msg00184.html

But thanks for yesterday's summary — I read it /with/ my beer.

Cheers,
David.

Re: A .profile puzzle

[Greg Wooledge]

On Mon, Oct 18, 2021 at 08:56:47AM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Monday 18 October 2021 07:17:05 Greg Wooledge wrote:
> 
> > On Mon, Oct 18, 2021 at 01:42:43AM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > > On Monday 18 October 2021 01:12:42 Will Mengarini wrote:
> > > > * Gene Heskett  [21-10/17=Su 12:18 -0400]:
> > > > > [...] opening a terminal hasn't called
> > > > > a ". .profile" since about jessie [...]
> > > >
> > > > Check whether you *also* have either .bash_profile or
> > > > .bash_login, because either of those supersedes .profile:
> > > >
> > > > ls -lA ~/.bash_{profile,login}
> > >
> > > Neither present, just .bashrc, and .bash_logout
> >
> > That's as expected, then.  Your .profile is not being read *now*
> > because it's not supposed to be, if you use a Display Manager to
> > login.
> >
> > Your .profile *used* to be read by terminals, because previously, your
> > terminals had been configured to run login shells.  However, I'd bet
> > it was *not* read by your session, meaning any changes to the
> > environment would not be seen by graphical applications that you
> > launched directly from your Desktop or your WM, without going through
> > a terminal.
> >
> > Assuming you run a Debian X11 Session via a Display Manager, and also
> > assuming you don't have a .xsession file, you probably want to
> > configure your environment in ~/.xsessionrc (note the "rc" on the
> > end).
> 
> That does not exist on that machine. I'll look into it a bit later, 
> thanks Greg.

Create it.  Now it exists.  Tada!

Re: A .profile puzzle

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 18 October 2021 07:17:05 Greg Wooledge wrote:

> On Mon, Oct 18, 2021 at 01:42:43AM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> > On Monday 18 October 2021 01:12:42 Will Mengarini wrote:
> > > * Gene Heskett  [21-10/17=Su 12:18 -0400]:
> > > > [...] opening a terminal hasn't called
> > > > a ". .profile" since about jessie [...]
> > >
> > > Check whether you *also* have either .bash_profile or
> > > .bash_login, because either of those supersedes .profile:
> > >
> > > ls -lA ~/.bash_{profile,login}
> >
> > Neither present, just .bashrc, and .bash_logout
>
> That's as expected, then.  Your .profile is not being read *now*
> because it's not supposed to be, if you use a Display Manager to
> login.
>
> Your .profile *used* to be read by terminals, because previously, your
> terminals had been configured to run login shells.  However, I'd bet
> it was *not* read by your session, meaning any changes to the
> environment would not be seen by graphical applications that you
> launched directly from your Desktop or your WM, without going through
> a terminal.
>
> Assuming you run a Debian X11 Session via a Display Manager, and also
> assuming you don't have a .xsession file, you probably want to
> configure your environment in ~/.xsessionrc (note the "rc" on the
> end).

That does not exist on that machine. I'll look into it a bit later, 
thanks Greg.

Cheers, Gene Heskett.
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page 

Re: A .profile puzzle

[Greg Wooledge]

On Mon, Oct 18, 2021 at 01:42:43AM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Monday 18 October 2021 01:12:42 Will Mengarini wrote:
> 
> > * Gene Heskett  [21-10/17=Su 12:18 -0400]:
> > > [...] opening a terminal hasn't called
> > > a ". .profile" since about jessie [...]
> >
> > Check whether you *also* have either .bash_profile or
> > .bash_login, because either of those supersedes .profile:
> >
> > ls -lA ~/.bash_{profile,login}
> 
> Neither present, just .bashrc, and .bash_logout

That's as expected, then.  Your .profile is not being read *now* because
it's not supposed to be, if you use a Display Manager to login.

Your .profile *used* to be read by terminals, because previously, your
terminals had been configured to run login shells.  However, I'd bet it
was *not* read by your session, meaning any changes to the environment
would not be seen by graphical applications that you launched directly
from your Desktop or your WM, without going through a terminal.

Assuming you run a Debian X11 Session via a Display Manager, and also
assuming you don't have a .xsession file, you probably want to configure
your environment in ~/.xsessionrc (note the "rc" on the end).

Re: A .profile puzzle

[Gene Heskett]

On Monday 18 October 2021 01:12:42 Will Mengarini wrote:

> * Gene Heskett  [21-10/17=Su 12:18 -0400]:
> > [...] opening a terminal hasn't called
> > a ". .profile" since about jessie [...]
>
> Check whether you *also* have either .bash_profile or
> .bash_login, because either of those supersedes .profile:
>
> ls -lA ~/.bash_{profile,login}

Neither present, just .bashrc, and .bash_logout

Cheers, Gene Heskett.
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page 

Re: A .profile puzzle

[Will Mengarini]

* Gene Heskett  [21-10/17=Su 12:18 -0400]:
> [...] opening a terminal hasn't called
> a ". .profile" since about jessie [...]

Check whether you *also* have either .bash_profile or
.bash_login, because either of those supersedes .profile:

ls -lA ~/.bash_{profile,login}

Re: A .profile puzzle

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 17 October 2021 21:15:21 Douglas McGarrett wrote:

> On 10/17/21 8:38 PM, David Christensen wrote:
> > On 10/17/21 2:12 PM, Stefan Monnier wrote:
> >>> normally when a storm comes through i turn off the PC anyways
> >>> because I really don't want to have things fried (even if i do
> >>> have the UPS and surge protection).
> >>
> >> Hmmm does turning them off make any difference w.r.t a surge large
> >> enough to pass through the surge suppression?
> >>
> >> I thought the only effective way to make a difference is to
> >> *unplug* them.
> >
> > +1 if you service is overhead and your concern is lightning strikes.
> >
> >
> > David
>
> You should unplug the charger to the laptop from the AC line AND
> from the laptop, and don't forget to disconnect the LAN if it is
> wired. However, you can't disconnect everything in the computer area
> or you'll go crazy! It would be a good idea to disconnect the router
> from the modem and from power. I got a bad hit from lightning in July,
> and it did take out the router and a desktop and a laptop, and damaged
> a printer, not to mention other devices around the house--like the TV,
> ferinstance!
> --doug

Your service is probably both old and not up to code, probably 
grandfathered in if it was built before the NEC became the law here in 
the states.

I brought mine up to code in 2008, as I installed a 200 amp service 
myself and have not lost ANYTHING but a wired keyboard since. The strike 
caused me to get a shock spark similar to a door knob, jolted me and 
killed the keyboard. I now use wireless keyboards for the extra air gap, 
and its all powered up 24/7/365.25. 6 of them in various locations.

The idea between the NEC and various other regulations is that if the 
line gets hit, it should all bounce in unison so the voltage on every 
connected wire goes up and down in unison, so the connected stuff still 
see's only the 5, 12, or 24 volts that runs it.

It all may be 250k volts away from ground for a few microsecnds. A dirt 
ground, other than whats legally connected at the meterhead, is a ground 
loop that upsets this balanced condition and will eat your lunch. This 
includes the old time practice of grounding a clothes washer to the 
copper cold water pipe. That is the case in this house, but that copper 
never touches dirt, its plastic before it leaves the house. All the 
network is wired from a cable modem which has lightning arrestors before 
the cable gets into the house. So I'm a big target, I should lose stuff, 
but I haven't.

Who am I? For starters, I am a Certified Electroncs Technician, 
registered in Nebraska as NB-118. One who spent the last 18 years of his 
working life as the Chief Operator of a middle market television 
station, much of the time by myself. Now I'm your classic old fart of 
87, and getting slowly rusty but I still know a few things about 
electricity.

Cheers, Gene Heskett.
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page 

Re: A .profile puzzle

[songbird]

Stefan Monnier wrote:
>> normally when a storm comes through i turn off the PC anyways because
>> I really don't want to have things fried (even if i do have the UPS
>> and surge protection).
>
> Hmmm does turning them off make any difference w.r.t a surge large
> enough to pass through the surge suppression?
>
> I thought the only effective way to make a difference is to
> *unplug* them.

  i do that too at times.


  songbird

Re: A .profile puzzle

[Douglas McGarrett]

On 10/17/21 8:38 PM, David Christensen wrote:

On 10/17/21 2:12 PM, Stefan Monnier wrote:

normally when a storm comes through i turn off the PC anyways because
I really don't want to have things fried (even if i do have the UPS
and surge protection).


Hmmm does turning them off make any difference w.r.t a surge large
enough to pass through the surge suppression?

I thought the only effective way to make a difference is to
*unplug* them.



+1 if you service is overhead and your concern is lightning strikes.


David


You should unplug the charger to the laptop from the AC line AND
from the laptop, and don't forget to disconnect the LAN if it is wired.
However, you can't disconnect everything in the computer area or
you'll go crazy! It would be a good idea to disconnect the router from
the modem and from power. I got a bad hit from lightning in July,
and it did take out the router and a desktop and a laptop, and damaged
a printer, not to mention other devices around the house--like the TV,
ferinstance!
--doug

Re: A .profile puzzle

[Stefan Monnier]

> normally when a storm comes through i turn off the PC anyways because
> I really don't want to have things fried (even if i do have the UPS
> and surge protection).

Hmmm does turning them off make any difference w.r.t a surge large
enough to pass through the surge suppression?

I thought the only effective way to make a difference is to
*unplug* them.


Stefan

Re: A .profile puzzle

[David Christensen]

On 10/17/21 2:12 PM, Stefan Monnier wrote:

normally when a storm comes through i turn off the PC anyways because
I really don't want to have things fried (even if i do have the UPS
and surge protection).


Hmmm does turning them off make any difference w.r.t a surge large
enough to pass through the surge suppression?

I thought the only effective way to make a difference is to
*unplug* them.



+1 if you service is overhead and your concern is lightning strikes.


David

Re: A .profile puzzle

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 17 October 2021 15:45:36 songbird wrote:

> Gene Heskett wrote:
> > On Sunday 17 October 2021 12:39:50 Dan Ritter wrote:
> >> Gene Heskett wrote:
> >> > The local electrical system, while better than Haiti's is getting
> >> > to be a nuisance with 5 second power failures about weekly, or is
> >> > that weakly?
> >>
> >> That's a great case for a UPS...
> >
> > Yup, but thats 4 more of them.  Is anybody hving a real sale?
>
>   no, you buy one for the whole place and put it on tha main
> panel.

Thanks for the idea, but I have not seen one big enough to handle this 
place for the 6 or 7 seconds it takes for the 20kw generac to start. My 
now departed wife had COPD and needed non-stop oxygen toward the end, so 
I installed the generac about 8 or 9 years ago. It would take a 1500WA 
to handle the 2 machines in the garage plus a 1000WA in the shop 
building, and another 1000WA for the machine driving my 3d printers. 
They only make them whole house sized on bids, bring money in 
wheelborrows. I do reserve the right to bitch about the lack of timely 
maintenance as I will have to put up with this BS for a year before 
they'll replace the contacts in the substations voltage regulator.  
BTDT, several times in the 31+ years I've been here. So you could say 
I've been to this particular rodeo before.

>   i only have a small one here for my PC and a light, but it
> has paid for itself many times over already in not having
> random power outages take me down and mess things up.  normally
> when a storm comes through i turn off the PC anyways because
> i really don't want to have things fried (even if i do have
> the UPS and surge protection).  i can do something else for
> a while.
>
>   if i were running large expensive equipment i'd surely have
> some UPS and surge protection for those.  if only just enough
> to get them to shut down without destroying the work in
> progress (or themselves).
>
>
>   songbird


Cheers, Gene Heskett.
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page 

Re: A .profile puzzle

[songbird]

Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Sunday 17 October 2021 12:39:50 Dan Ritter wrote:
>
>> Gene Heskett wrote:
>> > The local electrical system, while better than Haiti's is getting to
>> > be a nuisance with 5 second power failures about weekly, or is that
>> > weakly?
>>
>> That's a great case for a UPS...
>>
> Yup, but thats 4 more of them.  Is anybody hving a real sale?

  no, you buy one for the whole place and put it on tha main
panel.

  i only have a small one here for my PC and a light, but it 
has paid for itself many times over already in not having
random power outages take me down and mess things up.  normally
when a storm comes through i turn off the PC anyways because
i really don't want to have things fried (even if i do have
the UPS and surge protection).  i can do something else for
a while.

  if i were running large expensive equipment i'd surely have
some UPS and surge protection for those.  if only just enough 
to get them to shut down without destroying the work in 
progress (or themselves).


  songbird

Re: A .profile puzzle

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 17 October 2021 14:09:23 Greg Wooledge wrote:

> On Sun, Oct 17, 2021 at 06:35:01PM +0200, deloptes wrote:
> > > 2. and another pesky thing is starting a konsole to do work, needs
> > > a $PATH modification that we used to put in ~.profile. But opening
> > > a terminal hasn't called a ". .profile" since about jessie.  So
> > > thats another PITA.
> > >
> > > So, what has replaced .profile as the function for such as that in
> > > recent releases?
> >
> > AFAIK bash is not reading profile when you login, but not sure - it
> > could be also that it is not a login shell.
> > AFAIK you should open the terminal with "bash --login" to read the
> > profile. So try in the terminal "bash --login"
> >
> > I have put in my .profile
> >
> > alias bash='bash --login'
> >
> > long time ago
>
> OK, first thing first: that alias won't do *anything* useful.  If Gene
> is talking about starting a terminal from his window manager or
> desktop environment, that terminal is going to run $SHELL which is
> /bin/bash. It will not look at his aliases, no matter where they're
> defined.  It's just going to run bash.  Not "bash --login".
>
> Now let's step back a bit.
>
> When you run an instance of a shell, there are two ways you can do it.
> You either run a "login shell", or a "non-login shell".
>
> The purpose of a login shell is to be executed when you login.  That's
> the original intent.  Back in the 70s and 80s, there was no such thing
> as a "desktop".  There was just the shell.  You logged in by
> connecting your terminal or your modem to the host system, and getting
> a textual prompt.  After authentication, you were "logged in", and the
> system would run your account's shell with a "-" character in front of
> it.  This is the ancient way that your system said "this should be a
> login shell, not a regular shell".
>
> It looks like this:
>
> unicorn:~$ ps -ft tty1
> UID  PIDPPID  C STIME TTY  TIME CMD
> root 699   1  0 Oct09 tty1 00:00:00 /bin/login -p --
> greg 851 699  0 Oct09 tty1 00:00:00 -bash
> greg 863 851  0 Oct09 tty1 00:00:00 /bin/sh
> /usr/bin/startx [...]
>
> See where it says "-bash"?  That's my login shell.
>
> The purpose of having a "login shell" and a "regular shell" is because
> you probably have some things that you need to do once per session,
> when you login.  Like, setting up your environment variables.  Or
> printing today's calendar, or today's message from the administration.
> All of those things are unnecessary in a regular shell.  The
> environment is already set up, and you've already seen today's
> calendar or whatever.
>
> Any other time you started a shell, it would not have a "-" in front
> of its name, so it would be a regular shell.  This included shell
> escapes from your text editor or mail reader or news reader or pager. 
> Any time you escaped to a new shell from inside your editor, you
> didn't need to go through all the gyrations that a login shell did. 
> You don't want to see the calendar again, etc.
>
> A decade or two later, some people developed a windowing system.
>
> In this windowing system, there's a terminal emulator.  Normally when
> you run a terminal emulator, you run a shell inside it.  (Not always,
> but usually.)  This shell doesn't need to be a login shell.  You're
> probably going to open half a dozen terminal emulators with shells in
> them, maybe more.  You don't need to run the day's calendar, or set up
> the session environment, in every single terminal.  All of that has
> been taken care of already.  (Right?)
>
> So, in an X terminal emulator, you normally run a NON-login shell. 
> Just a regular shell.
>
> That's how it's supposed to work.
>
> However.
>
> Some people found that they had a really hard time getting their
> initial environment set up during their X logins.  This was common
> among newbies especially, because they didn't understand the new login
> procedure, and had no idea how to customize it.
>
> And where did we have a shit-load of Unix newbies?  Universities.
>
> So, in the world of academia, there is a whole different paradigm.  In
> this world, where everyone is expected to be incompetent, the old way
> of setting up your environment one time and inheriting it in every
> shell... that doesn't work.
>
> In the newbie-centric environment, where nobody knows how to do
> anything correctly, terminal emulators are configured to run login
> shells.
>
> There's an option for it, of course.  The people who wrote xterm
> realized that one might wish to run either a regular shell or a login
> shell.  So xterm has this option:
>
>-ls This option indicates that the shell that is started in
> the xterm window will be a login shell (i.e., the first character of
> argv[0] will be a dash, indicating to the shell that it should read
> the user's .login or .profile).
>
> Universities configured things so that their users' terminals would
> all run with this option, 

Re: A .profile puzzle

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 17 October 2021 12:39:50 Dan Ritter wrote:

> Gene Heskett wrote:
> > The local electrical system, while better than Haiti's is getting to
> > be a nuisance with 5 second power failures about weekly, or is that
> > weakly?
>
> That's a great case for a UPS...
>
Yup, but thats 4 more of them.  Is anybody hving a real sale?

> > 1. Before the latest failure I could do all this as me because the
> > mount point for the card is in my home directory, I own it all. And
> > didn't have to be root to do any of it.  This was not fixed by a 2nd
> > reboot.
>
> Are you mounting via /etc/fstab? If so, show us the line.
nope, command line, as me, until this reboot.

> > 2. and another pesky thing is starting a konsole to do work, needs a
> > $PATH modification that we used to put in ~.profile. But opening a
> > terminal hasn't called a ". .profile" since about jessie.  So thats
> > another PITA.
> >
> > So, what has replaced .profile as the function for such as that in
> > recent releases?
>
> I'm guessing that your shell is /bin/sh. That used to be bash,
> but now it's dash.

I can't find an About for that one, its whatever xfce uses.

> You could make your own shell bash -- just run chsh and log out,
> then come back in again.
>
> Note that .profile is supposed to be read only by a login
> shell, whereas .bashrc will be read by every interactive shell.
> Here's the chunk of man bash:
>
>When bash is invoked as an interactive login shell, or as a
>  non-interactive shell with the --login option, it first reads and
>  executes commands from the file /etc/profile, if that file exists.
>  After reading that file, it looks for ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login,
>  and ~/.profile, in that or der, and reads and executes commands from
> the first one that exists and is readable.  The --noprofile option may
> be used when the shell is started to inhibit this behavior.

I have tried putting that path stuff in .bashrc, but that fails too.

> When an interactive login shell exits, or a non-interactive
>  login shell executes the exit builtin command, bash reads and
> executes commands from the file ~/.bash_logout, if it exists.
>
> When an interactive shell that is not a login shell is
> started, bash reads and executes commands from /etc/bash.bashrc and
> ~/.bashrc, if these files exist.  This may be inhibited by using the
> --norc option. The --rcfile file option will force bash to read and
> execute commands from file instead of /etc/bash.bashrc and ~/.bashrc.
>
> When bash is started non-interactively, to run a shell script,
>  for example, it looks for the variable BASH_ENV in the environment,
>  expands its value if it appears there, and uses the expanded value
>  as the name of a file to read and execute.  Bash behaves as if the
>  following command were executed: if [ -n "$BASH_ENV" ]; then .
>  "$BASH_ENV"; fi but the value of the PATH variable is not used to
> search for the filename.
>
>
> -dsr-
Thanks Dan.

Cheers, Gene Heskett.
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page 

Re: A .profile puzzle

[Greg Wooledge]

On Sun, Oct 17, 2021 at 06:35:01PM +0200, deloptes wrote:
> > 2. and another pesky thing is starting a konsole to do work, needs a
> > $PATH modification that we used to put in ~.profile. But opening a
> > terminal hasn't called a ". .profile" since about jessie.  So thats
> > another PITA.
> > 
> > So, what has replaced .profile as the function for such as that in recent
> > releases?
> 
> AFAIK bash is not reading profile when you login, but not sure - it could be
> also that it is not a login shell.
> AFAIK you should open the terminal with "bash --login" to read the profile.
> So try in the terminal "bash --login"
> 
> I have put in my .profile
> 
> alias bash='bash --login'
> 
> long time ago

OK, first thing first: that alias won't do *anything* useful.  If Gene
is talking about starting a terminal from his window manager or desktop
environment, that terminal is going to run $SHELL which is /bin/bash.
It will not look at his aliases, no matter where they're defined.  It's
just going to run bash.  Not "bash --login".

Now let's step back a bit.

When you run an instance of a shell, there are two ways you can do it.
You either run a "login shell", or a "non-login shell".

The purpose of a login shell is to be executed when you login.  That's
the original intent.  Back in the 70s and 80s, there was no such thing
as a "desktop".  There was just the shell.  You logged in by connecting
your terminal or your modem to the host system, and getting a textual
prompt.  After authentication, you were "logged in", and the system would
run your account's shell with a "-" character in front of it.  This is
the ancient way that your system said "this should be a login shell, not
a regular shell".

It looks like this:

unicorn:~$ ps -ft tty1
UID  PIDPPID  C STIME TTY  TIME CMD
root 699   1  0 Oct09 tty1 00:00:00 /bin/login -p --
greg 851 699  0 Oct09 tty1 00:00:00 -bash
greg 863 851  0 Oct09 tty1 00:00:00 /bin/sh /usr/bin/startx
[...]

See where it says "-bash"?  That's my login shell.

The purpose of having a "login shell" and a "regular shell" is because
you probably have some things that you need to do once per session,
when you login.  Like, setting up your environment variables.  Or
printing today's calendar, or today's message from the administration.
All of those things are unnecessary in a regular shell.  The environment
is already set up, and you've already seen today's calendar or whatever.

Any other time you started a shell, it would not have a "-" in front of its
name, so it would be a regular shell.  This included shell escapes from
your text editor or mail reader or news reader or pager.  Any time you
escaped to a new shell from inside your editor, you didn't need to go
through all the gyrations that a login shell did.  You don't want to
see the calendar again, etc.

A decade or two later, some people developed a windowing system.

In this windowing system, there's a terminal emulator.  Normally when you
run a terminal emulator, you run a shell inside it.  (Not always, but
usually.)  This shell doesn't need to be a login shell.  You're probably
going to open half a dozen terminal emulators with shells in them, maybe
more.  You don't need to run the day's calendar, or set up the session
environment, in every single terminal.  All of that has been taken care
of already.  (Right?)

So, in an X terminal emulator, you normally run a NON-login shell.  Just
a regular shell.

That's how it's supposed to work.

However.

Some people found that they had a really hard time getting their initial
environment set up during their X logins.  This was common among newbies
especially, because they didn't understand the new login procedure, and
had no idea how to customize it.

And where did we have a shit-load of Unix newbies?  Universities.

So, in the world of academia, there is a whole different paradigm.  In
this world, where everyone is expected to be incompetent, the old way
of setting up your environment one time and inheriting it in every
shell... that doesn't work.

In the newbie-centric environment, where nobody knows how to do anything
correctly, terminal emulators are configured to run login shells.

There's an option for it, of course.  The people who wrote xterm realized
that one might wish to run either a regular shell or a login shell.  So
xterm has this option:

   -ls This option indicates that the shell that is started in the
   xterm window will be a login shell (i.e., the first character
   of argv[0] will be a dash, indicating to the shell that it
   should read the user's .login or .profile).

Universities configured things so that their users' terminals would all
run with this option, which means the users would get a login shell in
each terminal.

And then the users, who were all newbies and don't know any better, could
simply be told "if you want to change your environment, edit this 

Re: A .profile puzzle

[Andrew M.A. Cater]

On Sun, Oct 17, 2021 at 01:23:34PM -0400, Gene Heskett wrote:
> On Sunday 17 October 2021 12:35:01 deloptes wrote:
> 
> > Gene Heskett wrote:
> > > 1. Before the latest failure I could do all this as me because the
> > > mount point for the card is in my home directory, I own it all. And
> > > didn't have to be root to do any of it.  This was not fixed by a 2nd
> > > reboot.
> >
> > I guess this problem is not related to the .profile issue you are
> > having below.
> 
> Agreed.
> 
> > Check the permissions on the mount point
> 
> done, I still own it.
> 
> > and the fstab
> 
> its not in fstab, never was. I touched a file in 
> home/gene/Downloads/3dp.stf named sdb1 to create a mount I didn't have 
> to search thru /media to access.
> 

What on EARTH? This is a very trange way to do this, I think.

Either put it in fstab at which point it will alwsays be found or learn
where it's mounted under /media - which will be consistent, maybe? 
Interestingly,mounting an SD card that fits an SD card slot gave me one path, 
a micro-SDin a holder gave me another but they were always consistent.

lsblk is your friend here, I think, as is the mount command.

> Up until this 5 second power failure, I could, as me, mount that SD card 
> there, and use mc, as me, to overwrite a file on that card, then sync; 
> eject sdb1. Led on card adapter goes out, pull the card, take it back to 
> the printer and select and print the updated file.  Now I have to be 
> root to do any of it except the printer. The card is vfat, which has no 
> concept of file ownership.
> 
> > and also your  
> > group membership.
> 
> gene@dddprint:~/AppImages$ cat /etc/group|grep gene
> dialout:x:20:gene
> cdrom:x:24:gene
> sudo:x:27:gene
> audio:x:29:pulse,gene
> video:x:44:gene
> gene:x:1000:
> 
> Nothing changed there in months.
> 
> > The SD card might also need a fsck.
> 
> by whose fsck?
> 

Make sure it's not mounted, then fsck the device. Probably dosfstools is
needed.

> > > 2. and another pesky thing is starting a konsole to do work, needs a
> > > $PATH modification that we used to put in ~.profile. But opening a
> > > terminal hasn't called a ". .profile" since about jessie.  So thats
> > > another PITA.
> > >
> > > So, what has replaced .profile as the function for such as that in
> > > recent releases?
> >
> > AFAIK bash is not reading profile when you login, but not sure - it
> > could be also that it is not a login shell.
> 
> XFCe login, I think. I only see it once on that machine. logging in 
> remotely with "ssh -Y machine-name" or 'user1000'@machine-name is how I 
> generally run things from a comfy chair.
> 
> > AFAIK you should open the terminal with "bash --login" to read the
> > profile. So try in the terminal "bash --login"
> 
> Done, but no change in the $PATH. But it did take two ctl-d's to exit it.
> 
> > I have put in my .profile
> >
> > alias bash='bash --login'
> >
> > long time ago
> 
> Thank you deloptes.
> 
> Cheers, Gene Heskett.
> -- 
> "There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
>  soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
> -Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
> If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
>  - Louis D. Brandeis
> Genes Web page 
> 
Take care, with all good wishes as always,

Andy Cater

Re: A .profile puzzle

[Gene Heskett]

On Sunday 17 October 2021 12:35:01 deloptes wrote:

> Gene Heskett wrote:
> > 1. Before the latest failure I could do all this as me because the
> > mount point for the card is in my home directory, I own it all. And
> > didn't have to be root to do any of it.  This was not fixed by a 2nd
> > reboot.
>
> I guess this problem is not related to the .profile issue you are
> having below.

Agreed.

> Check the permissions on the mount point

done, I still own it.

> and the fstab

its not in fstab, never was. I touched a file in 
home/gene/Downloads/3dp.stf named sdb1 to create a mount I didn't have 
to search thru /media to access.

Up until this 5 second power failure, I could, as me, mount that SD card 
there, and use mc, as me, to overwrite a file on that card, then sync; 
eject sdb1. Led on card adapter goes out, pull the card, take it back to 
the printer and select and print the updated file.  Now I have to be 
root to do any of it except the printer. The card is vfat, which has no 
concept of file ownership.

> and also your  
> group membership.

gene@dddprint:~/AppImages$ cat /etc/group|grep gene
dialout:x:20:gene
cdrom:x:24:gene
sudo:x:27:gene
audio:x:29:pulse,gene
video:x:44:gene
gene:x:1000:

Nothing changed there in months.

> The SD card might also need a fsck.

by whose fsck?

> > 2. and another pesky thing is starting a konsole to do work, needs a
> > $PATH modification that we used to put in ~.profile. But opening a
> > terminal hasn't called a ". .profile" since about jessie.  So thats
> > another PITA.
> >
> > So, what has replaced .profile as the function for such as that in
> > recent releases?
>
> AFAIK bash is not reading profile when you login, but not sure - it
> could be also that it is not a login shell.

XFCe login, I think. I only see it once on that machine. logging in 
remotely with "ssh -Y machine-name" or 'user1000'@machine-name is how I 
generally run things from a comfy chair.

> AFAIK you should open the terminal with "bash --login" to read the
> profile. So try in the terminal "bash --login"

Done, but no change in the $PATH. But it did take two ctl-d's to exit it.

> I have put in my .profile
>
> alias bash='bash --login'
>
> long time ago

Thank you deloptes.

Cheers, Gene Heskett.
-- 
"There are four boxes to be used in defense of liberty:
 soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use in that order."
-Ed Howdershelt (Author, 1940)
If we desire respect for the law, we must first make the law respectable.
 - Louis D. Brandeis
Genes Web page 

Re: A .profile puzzle

[Dan Ritter]

Gene Heskett wrote: 
> 
> The local electrical system, while better than Haiti's is getting to be a 
> nuisance with 5 second power failures about weekly, or is that weakly?

That's a great case for a UPS...

> 1. Before the latest failure I could do all this as me because the mount 
> point for the card is in my home directory, I own it all. And didn't 
> have to be root to do any of it.  This was not fixed by a 2nd reboot.

Are you mounting via /etc/fstab? If so, show us the line.


> 2. and another pesky thing is starting a konsole to do work, needs a 
> $PATH modification that we used to put in ~.profile. But opening a 
> terminal hasn't called a ". .profile" since about jessie.  So thats 
> another PITA.
> 
> So, what has replaced .profile as the function for such as that in recent 
> releases?

I'm guessing that your shell is /bin/sh. That used to be bash,
but now it's dash.

You could make your own shell bash -- just run chsh and log out,
then come back in again.

Note that .profile is supposed to be read only by a login
shell, whereas .bashrc will be read by every interactive shell.
Here's the chunk of man bash:

   When bash is invoked as an interactive login shell, or as a
 non-interactive shell with the --login option, it first reads and
 executes commands from the file /etc/profile, if that file exists.
 After reading that file, it looks for ~/.bash_profile, ~/.bash_login,
 and ~/.profile, in that or der, and reads and executes commands from the
 first one that exists and is readable.  The --noprofile option may be
 used when the shell is started to inhibit this behavior.
 
When an interactive login shell exits, or a non-interactive
 login shell executes the exit builtin command, bash reads and executes
 commands from the file ~/.bash_logout, if it exists.
 
When an interactive shell that is not a login shell is started,
 bash reads and executes commands from /etc/bash.bashrc and ~/.bashrc, if
 these files exist.  This may be inhibited by using the --norc option.
 The --rcfile file option will force bash to read and execute commands
 from file instead of /etc/bash.bashrc and ~/.bashrc.

When bash is started non-interactively, to run a shell script,
 for example, it looks for the variable BASH_ENV in the environment,
 expands its value if it appears there, and uses the expanded value
 as the name of a file to read and execute.  Bash behaves as if the
 following command were executed: if [ -n "$BASH_ENV" ]; then .
 "$BASH_ENV"; fi but the value of the PATH variable is not used to search
 for the filename.


-dsr-

Re: A .profile puzzle

[deloptes]

Gene Heskett wrote:

> 1. Before the latest failure I could do all this as me because the mount
> point for the card is in my home directory, I own it all. And didn't
> have to be root to do any of it.  This was not fixed by a 2nd reboot.
> 

I guess this problem is not related to the .profile issue you are having
below.
Check the permissions on the mount point and the fstab and also your group
membership.
The SD card might also need a fsck.

> 2. and another pesky thing is starting a konsole to do work, needs a
> $PATH modification that we used to put in ~.profile. But opening a
> terminal hasn't called a ". .profile" since about jessie.  So thats
> another PITA.
> 
> So, what has replaced .profile as the function for such as that in recent
> releases?

AFAIK bash is not reading profile when you login, but not sure - it could be
also that it is not a login shell.
AFAIK you should open the terminal with "bash --login" to read the profile.
So try in the terminal "bash --login"

I have put in my .profile

alias bash='bash --login'

long time ago

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