Supondo que você esteja usando o bash como seu shell, confira o snippet abaixo em esta página .
Bash Startup Files
When a "login shell" starts up, it reads the file
/etc/profileand then~/.bash_profileor~/.bash_loginor~/.profile(whichever one exists - it only reads one of these, checking for them in the order mentioned).When a "non-login shell" starts up, it reads the file
/etc/bashrcand then the file~/.bashrc.Note that when bash is invoked with the name "sh", it tries to mimic the startup sequence of the Bourne shell ("sh"). In particular, a non-login shell invoked as "sh" does not read any dot files by default. See the bash man page for details.