How do I set an environment variable at boot time (via a script)?

Question

I'd like to set a couple of environment variables (at boot time) on an Ubuntu machine (10.04), but I want to create their value via a script, much like:

export THE_ENV_VAR=$(script_to_execute_and_use_stdout_from)

• The reason I want to do this is that the commands used to set the environment variables take long time to execute (10s or so), so that's why I only want to do it once after boot. Anyway, currently I solved this by caching the result of the command at boot time, so that subsequent calls will go fast, thus not using env. variables at all.

I've tried setting in /etc/environment, but that only copies rhs verbatim

I've tried executing a script in /etc/init.d/ at startup, but that does not seem to work.

Ideas?

Answer 1

Put that in ~/.bash_profile or ~/.bashrc

gedit ~/.bashrc

Use .bash_profile if you need to use those variable with non-interactive shells (scripts) and ~/.bashrc if you are setting your variables in a shell.

If that does not work, we need more details, in particular what variables are you setting and for what purpose ?

Answer 2

Put your commands into /etc/rc.local. Make sure to read the comments at the head.