Hi ! It seems that under X (Gnome or KDE) the aliases defined for instance under /etc/profile.d/xxx are not taken into account. If I am not using X, then they are taken into account. The strangest thing is that everything defined in /etc/profile.d is considered except the aliases. Moreover, some terminal "konsole" or the Gnome terminal do not update the wmtp logins database when kvt or xterm do it. Thanks in advance for any help Daniel
some terminals run "login shells" by default, and others don't. This affects whether or not your .bash_profile (and /etc/profile.d/*) are sourced in addition to your .bashrc. This is configurable on a case-by-case basis. For instance, with gnome-terminal, you must pass the flag --utmp. For xterm, you can do it with +u and turn it off with -u.