Public bug reported: upstart "owns" (dpkg -S) a file /etc/X11/Xsession.d/99upstart which changes the STARTUP environment variable to "init --user". This makes the actual X session startup in 99x11-common_start go through upstart. Since the environment variables used in calling init do not get passed through to the actual upstart job, this squashes the environment customization done in Xsession.d and before. For instance, lightdm's session wrapper processes /etc/profile; 40x11-common_xsessionrc processes .xsessionrc, but these customizations do not make it into the user environment. (This is a very easy test case: put TESTVAR=1 in .xsessionrc, log out and back in, echo $TESTVAR. Should display 1, instead displays empty.)
Note this bug is not "upstart doesn't pass through the environment in general," but "upstart specifically interferes with Xsession startup such that the environment is not passed through." It's essentially an interaction between upstart and x11-common. This seems to be the root of the recurrence of bug #794315 and I have to wonder about bug #1259877. Tested on Xubuntu 14.04.1 LTS (updates channel enabled), upstart 1.12.1-0ubuntu4.2, x11-common 1:7.7+1ubuntu8 ** Affects: upstart (Ubuntu) Importance: Undecided Status: New -- You received this bug notification because you are a member of Ubuntu Bugs, which is subscribed to Ubuntu. https://bugs.launchpad.net/bugs/1386760 Title: Upstart quashes Xsession.d environment To manage notifications about this bug go to: https://bugs.launchpad.net/ubuntu/+source/upstart/+bug/1386760/+subscriptions -- ubuntu-bugs mailing list ubuntu-bugs@lists.ubuntu.com https://lists.ubuntu.com/mailman/listinfo/ubuntu-bugs