Setting environment variable in Ubuntu at boot time (via script)

Question

I'd like to set a couple of environment variables 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)

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

You need to write your export statement into /etc/bash.bashrc file, which is a system wide .bashrc file that will set environments for all system users :)

Edit: One way to do this is to populate a cache file during boot, and let the user scripts read from that cached file.