Yes, that is the expected behaviour.

The behaviour, in short, is as follows:

• bash started as an interactive login shell: reads ~/.profile


• bash started as an interactive non-login shell: reads ~/.bashrc

Read the bash manual about startup files for more details.

Personally, I think that this behaviour is strange and I have not yet found a rationalization for this design decision.

Some explanation of the terminology:

• An interactive shell is a shell with which you can interact, that means you can type commands in it. Most shells you will use are interactive shells.


• A non-interactive shell is a shell with which you cannot interact. Shell scripts run inside non-interactive shells.


• A login shell is the shell which is started when you login to your system.


• A non-login shell is a shell which is started after the login process.

Most shells you see are interactive non-login shells. This is especially true if you are running a graphical environment like gnome, because then gnome is the "login shell". Any bash session started inside gnome is a non-login shell. If you want to see a real interactive login shell then go to a virtual console (using Ctrl+Alt+F1) and then log in using your username and password. That is a real interactive login bash shell. You can go back to the graphical shell using Ctrl+Alt+F7.

There is an option --login which will make bash behave as if it is a login shell even if started after your have logged in. Configuring gnome-terminal to start bash as a login shell means it will start bash using the --login option.

Usually you want bash to always read ~/.bashrc in an interactive shell. Here is how I recommend to do that:

Create a ~/.bash_profile file. If bash is started as a login shell it will first look for ~/.bash_profile before looking for ~/.profile. If bash finds ~/.bash_profile then it will not read ~/.profile.

Put the following lines in ~/.bash_profile:

[ -f "$HOME/.profile" ] && source "$HOME/.profile"

[ -f "$HOME/.bashrc" ] && source "$HOME/.bashrc"

Now if bash is started as an interactive login shell it will read the following files:

1. ~/.bash_profile


2. ~/.profile


3. ~/.bashrc

and if bash is started as an interactive non-login shell:

1. ~/.bashrc

You should put stuff which is bash specific in ~/.bashrc and stuff which is not bash specific in ~/.profile. For example PATH goes in ~/.profile and HISTCONTROL goes in ~/.bashrc.

Note that ~/.profile is not bash specific. Other text based shells (for example sh or ksh) and graphical shells (gnome) also read ~/.profile. That is why you should not put bash specific stuff in ~/.profile.