file to store the bash settings for a virtual terminal

Question

When You press [ALT+F1...F6] on Linux machine You see "virtual terminal" usually. When I log in via virtual terminal on my Debian machine - bash does not implement settings from $HOME/.bashrc and $HOME/.profile files! What file must I use to place bash settings for virtual terminal?

I tried to debug this:

    $ strace  -e open  bash --login 2>&1 | grep -P "\.bash|profile"

    open("/etc/profile", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = 3
    open("/etc/profile.d/", O_RDONLY|O_NONBLOCK|O_LARGEFILE|O_DIRECTORY|O_CLOEXEC) = 3
    open("/etc/profile.d/bash_completion.sh", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = 3
    open("/home/ruslan/.bash_profile", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)
    open("/home/ruslan/.bash_login", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = 3
    exit
    open("/home/ruslan/.bash_logout", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = 3
    open("/etc/bash.bash_logout", O_RDONLY|O_LARGEFILE) = -1 ENOENT (No such file or directory)

~/.profile - not present!

Answer 1

When you computer boots it starts init and checks a file (e.g. /etc/inittab) for processes to start. Usually this file contains a few lines like the one below.

c5:5:respawn:/sbin/agetty 57600 tty2 xterm-256color

Loose translation:
When in run level 5 (multiuser mode), start agetty (log-in process), on console 2 (ALT-F2). If the process dies (e.g. after you log out) start a new one (respawn).

If you log in that that agetty then you will start a log-in shell. This can be bash. It can be another shell. (You can set the default shell with chsh).

If you have bash configured as default shell then it will start bash and look in these places: (note, this files are check when bash is invoked specifically as a log-in shell)

• /etc/profile
• ~/.bash_profile
• ~/.bash_login
• ~/.profile

As you can see this includes the $HOME/.profile you mentioned earlier, but not $HOME/.bashrc

In this case of an interactive but non-login shell, bash checks /etc/bashrc and ~/.bashrc.

I suspect that last part answers your question. (Test it with bash -l or bash --login).