From Bugzilla Helper:
User-Agent: Mozilla/5.0 (Windows; U; Windows NT 5.0; en-US; rv:1.5)
Gecko/20031007

Description of problem:
So, the title says it all actually. However, is it a bug
or a 'Working As Designed'? (Can you tell I have been working
with IBM ;-)

Actually, /etc/profile is never run, try any:

'New shell'
'New Linux Console'
'New Root Console'
'New Screen Session'

I do not pretend to understand the fine differences between the
above, unfortunately.

Here's the easiest way to test this:

Add this to /etc/profile

date > /tmp/profilerun.$$

Then you can 'echo $$' in your bash and check whether the
file with the correct processnumber has been created.

Maybe this is related to this bug:
  
https://bugzilla.redhat.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=18225

...but again, GUI/terminal/shell interactions are currently out
of my league.

I noticed this because I do root-specific setup in /etc/profile,
like this:

if [ `id -u` = 0 ]; then
  pathmunge /sbin
  pathmunge /usr/sbin
  pathmunge /usr/local/sbin
  pathmunge /usr/local/postfix/sbin
fi

...and the root's path did not include these.


Version-Release number of selected component (if applicable):
kdebase-3.2.2-4

How reproducible:
Always

Steps to Reproduce:
1. Add date > /tmp/profilerun.$$ to /etc/profile
2. Open another shell using konsole
3. Check whether profilerun.$$ exists
    

Actual Results:  /etc/profile has not bee run

Expected Results:  /etc/profile should have been run (IMHO)

Additional info: