Question

I have this following simple program:

int main()
{
    char* v = getenv("TEST_VAR");
    cout << "v = " << (v==NULL ? "NULL" : v) << endl;
    return 0;
}

These lines are added to .bashrc file:

TEST_VAR="2"
export TEST_VAR

Now, when I run this program from the terminal window (Ubuntu 10.04), it prints v = 2. If I run the program by another way: using launcher or from Eclipse, it prints NULL. I think this is because TEST_VAR is defined only inside bash shell. How can I create persistent Linux environment variable, which is accessible in any case?

Answer 1

On my system (Fedora 13) you can make system wide environment variables by adding them under /etc/profile.d/.

So for example if you add this to a file in /etc/profile.d/my_system_wide.sh

SYSTEM_WIDE="system wide"
export SYSTEM_WIDE

and then open a another terminal it should source it regardless of who the user is opening the terminal

echo $SYSTEM_WIDE
system_wide