# switching to slim, .profile not read



## Business_Woman (Oct 13, 2013)

Hi,

After switching to slim from XDM I noticed my PATH wasn't set correctly. It looks like slim won't read my .profile. After disabling slim at startup, my .profile is again read at startup. Is there a good reason for this?


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## posman (Jan 27, 2014)

Did you find the reason for this or a solution to read .profile?

I'm using slim 1.3.5 and XFCE 4.10 and my .profile is not being read.  The login_cmd in /usr/local/etc/slim.conf is 

```
login_cmd           exec /bin/sh - ~/.xinitrc %session
```

The only line that is in .xinitrc is this

```
/usr/local/bin/startxfce4
```


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## Business_Woman (Jan 27, 2014)

No, i still don't know why this happens


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## SirDice (Jan 28, 2014)

The ~/.profile is only read when starting a login shell. Starting X doesn't start a login shell.


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## posman (Jan 28, 2014)

but Isn't slim executing the shell with the login_cmd? It executes sh with parameters


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## rliegh (Jul 8, 2019)

I found this thread in a google search because I am still having the same problem. Using slim in virtualbox, .profile isn't being read.

I'm using MATE and I was able to fix this by checking "Run command as login shell" in mate terminal's profile preferences ("Title and command" tab). I'm assuming that xfce, GNOME and KDE each can do the same thing with their terminal programs.


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