MacOS – How to find where an environmental variable got set

bashcommand lineenvironment-variablesmacosterminal

I installed a program to try it out, and decided I didn't like it so I moved the app to the trash.

Today, in my shell, I noticed that there are a couple of PROGRAMNAME_BLAHBLAH environmental variables set. I'd like to remove those, too.

I don't even have a .bashrc or .bash_login, so I grepped every file I could think of (~/.* ~/Library/* /Library/* /etc/*). The only place these variables turned up was a file ~/.MacOSX/environment.plist, so I removed it from there (Xcode can edit binary plists), but new shells still have these variables set.

What other files does Mac OS X 10.7's terminal/bash run on startup? How might these variables get set?

Or is it something funny like "need to reboot after editing environment.plist"?

Best Answer

~/.MacOSX/environment.plist is read at session start. If you want your change to it to be tested immediatly you have to restart your session.
A restart of the system is useless.
You can edit this environment initialisation file with:

plutil -convert xml1 environment.plist
vi environment.plist

I advise you to simply recover it to its version prior to your software installation.

Other hint, check all the files which were modified on the date of installation of your unwanted software. If you installed your software 15 days ago, you can perform this with:

find / -mtime -16 -mtime +14 -ls

Option 1: just use /etc/launchd.conf

Add a line like

setenv PATH /Users/username/bin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin

to /etc/launchd.conf and restart to apply the changes.

The default path is /usr/bin:/bin:/usr/sbin:/sbin.

/etc/launchd.conf applies to all processes, which includes graphical applications, non-login shells, and programs started by launchd jobs.

Edit /etc/launchd.conf manually if you see that some program or installer has added new paths to /etc/paths or /etc/paths.d/*.

Option 2: use a launchd job to set the path during startup

Save this plist as /Library/LaunchDaemons/setpath.plist:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE plist PUBLIC "-//Apple//DTD PLIST 1.0//EN" "http://www.apple.com/DTDs/PropertyList-1.0.dtd">
<plist version="1.0">
<dict>
  <key>Label</key>
  <string>setpath</string>
  <key>ProgramArguments</key>
  <array>
    <string>bash</string>
    <string>-c</string>
    <string>launchctl setenv PATH "$((launchctl getenv PATH|tr : \\n
    cat /etc/paths /etc/paths.d/*)|awk '!a[$0]++'|paste -sd: -)"</string>
  </array>
  <key>RunAtLoad</key>
  <true/>
</dict>
</plist>

The program should be run the next time you restart. It changes the PATH of the root launchd process, which is inherited by the user launchd process.

In my opinion it's easier to just edit /etc/launchd.conf though.

Option 3: make bash run path_helper even for non-login shells

path_helper is run from /etc/profile, /etc/zshenv, and /etc/csh.login. zsh reads /etc/zshenv even for non-login shells but bash does not read /etc/profile for non-login shells.

This makes bash run path_helper for interactive non-login shells and for non-interactive non-login shells:

echo 'eval $(/usr/libexec/path_helper -s)'>>~/.bashrc
setenv BASH_ENV /etc/profile|sudo tee -a /etc/launchd.conf

It does not make bash run path_helper for non-interactive non-login shells invoked as sh. It also does not affect graphical applications or processes that are not started from shells.

Best Answer

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Option 1: just use /etc/launchd.conf

Option 2: use a launchd job to set the path during startup

Option 3: make bash run path_helper even for non-login shells

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