It appears this has come up before, and was discussed upstream. [1] and [2] cover discussion of whether --rcfile should ignore the system-wide bashrc (SYS_BASHRC hereafter), with the conclusion from upstream that it should not. [3] is an attempt by someone to fix this upstream by modifying bash's behaviour, which is rejected by the upstream developers. [4] and [5] are the upstream Debian bugs (which I'll link this bug to).
At any rate, upstream bash devs have made their position quite clear: the Debian-patched documentation is wrong, and the behaviour of bash is as expected. So, the solution to this bug is to fix the documentation. I'll propose an updated patch here and see if we can't put this decade- old bug to bed! I'll also try and rebase the noble patch upstream for Debian (there's already a patch there, but it's predictably ancient). [1]: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bash/2018-01/msg00003.html [2]: https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/bug-bash/2009-05/msg00031.html [3]: https://savannah.gnu.org/support/index.php?107950 [4]: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=516152 [5]: https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=343673 ** Bug watch added: Debian Bug tracker #516152 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=516152 ** Bug watch added: Debian Bug tracker #343673 https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=343673 ** Also affects: gnubash via https://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=516152 Importance: Unknown Status: Unknown -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Touch seeded packages, which is subscribed to bash in Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1097467 Title: bash does not fulfill --rcfile option properly Status in Gnu Bash: Unknown Status in bash package in Ubuntu: Confirmed Bug description: I am starting a bash shell using $ bash --noprofile --rcfile my-custom-bash-rc-file Due to the --rcflag, the newly started bash should *not* execute commands from /etc/bash.bashrc. That is at least how I interpret `man bash`: --rcfile file Execute commands from file instead of the system wide initialization file /etc/bash.bashrc and the standard personal initial‐ ization file ~/.bashrc if the shell is interactive (see INVOCATION below). However, it seems that the commands in /etc/bash.bashrc are in fact executed. To see/reproduce/diagnose this, on Ubuntu I believe one can just invoke bash like this (as the regular user): $ touch testrc $ env -i bash --noprofile --rcfile testrc The expected result would be that nothing special is printed on the terminal. However, there is an error message, which is printed from /etc/bash.bashrc. The "env -i" causes $HOME to not be set in the invoked shell, which in turn triggers the error. The error message is: > To run a command as administrator (user "root"), use "sudo <command>". > See "man sudo_root" for details. Another way to see this -- without the "env -i" -- is to add a command to /etc/bash.bashrc, such as echo HELLO THERE To trigger the bug(?), one can then just do $ touch testrc $ bash --noprofile --rcfile testrc The expected result would be that nothing special is shown in the terminal. However, it turns out that the string HELLO THERE is printed. To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/gnubash/+bug/1097467/+subscriptions -- Mailing list: https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages Post to : touch-packages@lists.launchpad.net Unsubscribe : https://launchpad.net/~touch-packages More help : https://help.launchpad.net/ListHelp
