Hello,
I installed a fresh copy of openSUSE 11.0, and I needed to set a new environment variable, so i edited /etc/environment and added a line VARIABLE=VALUE, restarted the system, but when I try to use the variable, it is not set. /etc/environment seems to have no effect on setting the variables. Do you have any idea why? I’d appreciate help very much. Thank you!
As the comments in the file says, it’s only for pam_env.
To set an environment variable for all shells, you probably need one of /etc/profile.local /etc/bash.bashrc.local or a file in /etc/profile.d/. See man bash for when to use what.