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(Please excuse my English)

I installed WSL Ubuntu 24.04 on my Windows 11 pro machine, and edited /etc/environment like below to change the system-wide $PATH.

  • Before

PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/snap/bin"

  • After

PATH="/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/snap/bin:/mybin"

However, Only the root user' $PATH changed, and the default user's $PATH did not changed at all, like below. ('us' is the default username of WSL Ubuntu and 'SERVER' is my Windows machine name)

us@SERVER:~$ echo $PATH

/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/usr/games:/usr/local/games:/usr/lib/wsl/lib:/snap/bin

us@SERVER:~$ su root

Password:

root@SERVER:/home/us# echo $PATH

/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin:/snap/bin:/mybin

Considering that the default user's $PATH contains the string /usr/lib/wsl/lib, it seems that WSL Ubuntu sets the default user's $PATH somewhere else.

How can I modify the default user's $PATH in WSL Ubuntu?

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  • I think the issue is that WSL skips any traditional login process, which is what would normally invoke the pam_env.so module to read /etc/environment - see Any idea why on WSL2 PAM modules are not loaded on login (for example pam_env)?. When you use su it goes through a normal PAM stack, per /etc/pam.d/su for example (and similar for sudo). Commented Apr 28 at 16:58
  • @steeldriver : I found that this is a very old and unresolved problem. bash not picking up /etc/environment Commented Apr 29 at 17:10
  • Good find - I didn't see that Commented Apr 29 at 17:10

1 Answer 1

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  1. Which shell are you using? bash ?

    ps -o cmd= -p $$

  2. I'm not sure that /etc/environment (or rather /etc/environment.d/*.conf) is the best place to update your PATH environment variable. Did you try to update one of the following files instead?

  • ~/.profile (any shell, user-wide)
  • ~/.bash_profile (bash, user-wide) -- not always loaded, e.g. when adding a tab in a terminal.
  • ~/.bashrc (bash, user-wide) -- should always work
  • /etc/bash.bashrc (bash, system-wide)
  • /etc/profile (any shell, system-wide)
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  • The default shell of WSL Ubuntu 24.04 is bash. I tried editing /etc/profile, and this time the default user's $PATH changed, but root's $PATH did not. Commented Apr 29 at 16:55
  • Check which shell is used by your root profile, then apply the aforementionned steps once you are identified as root. For example, you could update /root/.bash_profile or /root/.bashrc (as ~ corresponds to ~root which corresponds to /root). Commented Apr 30 at 11:51

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