Re: [Help-bash] How to figure out what files has been loaded by bash?

[Bob Proulx]

Peng Yu wrote:
> I try to login to an linux account (with bash as the login shell)? But
> it somehow hangs before getting to loading .bashrc file (as I put an
> echo statement in the first line of .bashrc but nothing is printed to
> the screen). Is there a way debug what files has been loaded in the
> login process so that I can figure how what causes the problem?

A useful debug technique is:

  ssh -t localhost bash -ix

That will trace every command executed at login time.

The bash documentation includes an extensive section describing what
files are sourced.  Unfortunately due to legacy shell compatibility it
isn't a completely simple process.

       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 order,
       and reads and executes commands from the first one that exists
       and is readable.

Note that .bashrc is NOT sourced at login time.  The ~/.bash_profile
et al files are sourced at login time.  In your ~/.bash_profile or
~/.profile include a statement to source the ~/.bashrc file.

For example I have this in my ~/.profile and share it among bash, ksh,
zsh, and sh.  All of those read ~/.profile.

  export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
  export LC_COLLATE=C
  PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH
  if [ -n "$BASH_VERSION" ]; then
    . "$HOME/.bashrc"
  fi

Obviously if you only care about bash then that can be simplified.
But I am always encouraging generality. :-)

  export LANG=en_US.UTF-8
  export LC_COLLATE=C
  PATH=$HOME/bin:$PATH
  . "$HOME/.bashrc"

Bob