On Tue, Sep 22, 2020 at 09:10:15AM +1000, Michael Slade wrote: > I don't know what package to assign this to so I guess I can't use the usual > bug reporting mechanism. > > I have a debian bullseye mate desktop with a custom keyboard shortcut set up > to run xterm. I noticed that an ssh agent is automatically set up for it, > but a different agent is set up for programs that are run other ways, > including via the default C-A-t shortcut for the default terminal.
It sounds like MATE is starting to become more GNOME-3-like. What a shame. You'll want to talk to MATE or GNOME experts, but it sounds to me like the terminal that gets spawned by C-A-t is a child of dbus, rather than a child of the X or Wayland session. And just like in GNOME 3, when that happens, the terminal (and thus, the shell within it) does NOT inherit your normal environment. You could verify this yourself, perhaps, by printing a tree-view of your processes, and seeing who the parent of the offending terminal is. I bet it'll be dbus. With your xterm, on the other hand, I suspect that your keybaord shortcut is launching it as a child of your window manager, or some other part of your MATE session. Therefore, it inherits the same environment that your other desktop session programs have.
