Dropbear ignores some env variables

[Rob Landley]

On 08/22/2011 10:26 PM, Amer wrote:
> Hello. I just started using dropbear (compiled from latest source)
> only recently so pardon me if this has been brought up before
> 
> I noticed that on some distro, debian based ones mainly such as
> Ubuntu,  dropbear doesn't read and set environment variables like PATH
> and locales.
>
> When I access my server via dropbear, I found out that my
> locales weren't correctly set. Same with PATH. This however doesn't
> happen if I log in through openssh.
>
> Is this a known issue?


That's not dropbear, that's your shell.  Whether it reads /etc/profile
or ~./.bash_profile or what are dependent on how it's invoke, the main
distinction being whether it's a "login" shell or not.  (Login shells
initialize their full environment by running magic shell scripts behidn
the scenes, like the ones listed above.  Shells called to run shell
scripts and such mostly don't, although actually they just read _other_
setup scripts which are usually blank or don't contain so much baggage.)

Sounds like openssh is running its shells as login shells when it isn't
given a command line, and dropbear isn't.  Try adding -l to your shell
invocation and see what happens.

(go "man bash", hit forward slash, and search for "login".  I note that
if you're using dash, Ubuntu's Defective Annoying SHell, you're on your
own.  That thing was a bad idea in the first place.)

Rob