Thank you to all who have replied.
When i had read the man page I missed the part about bash sourcing ~/.bash_profile first for log-in shells only, I took it to be universal.
some other responses interspersed below.
>Date: Thu, 8 Jul 2010 18:12:06 -0500
>From: C Anthony Risinger <anthony@xxxxxxxx>
>Subject: Re: [arch-general] gnome-terminal configuration
>To: General Discussion about Arch Linux <arch-general@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Message-ID:
><AANLkTilj7lPsMZLZg7XFZnpYhgnqaPyk3MidkPPGqQau@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1
>
>2010/7/8 Ng Oon-Ee <ngoonee@xxxxxxxxx>:
>> On Thu, 2010-07-08 at 13:00 -0300, Hilton Medeiros wrote:
>>> On Thu, 8 Jul 2010 10:47:03 -0400
>>> <aerospace1028@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
>>>
>>> >
<snip>
>> You could also set things in .profile instead? I've read before that
>> this is the 'proper' way to put env stuff etc.
>
Most of what I did was create a short ~/.bash_alias file and load it in a ~/.bash_profile, for the time being, moving the three lines of code to ~/.bashrc works. I plan to go through the man page again and review the preference order for .bashrc .profile and .bash_profile.
>i could be wrong, as i've heavily customized these scripts, but i
>believe by default the only thing .bashrc does (in arch) is source
>.bash_aliases if it exists; so put aliases there.
>
The default appears to be that
.bashrc: checks for an interactive session, sets the prompt and aliases the ls command.
.bash_profile: references and loads settings in ~.bashrc
Since bash_profile called bashrc, that was where I put my call to bash_alias. For the time being, shifting it over to .bashrc appears to work.
>take a look at:
>
>/etc/profile*
>/etc/bash*
>~/.profile
>~/.bash*
by default I don't have a ~.profile. Not sure if that's right or not. I originally installed from the speakup modified install CD.
Again, thank you to everyone who helped out. It appears my confusion was over the order for .bashrc, .profile and .bash_profile in a log-in vs. non log-in shell. I've got everything working now, but I'll still go back and re-read the appropriate section of the manual for my own interest.
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