cannot customize terminal PATH anywhere

[Florin Andrei]

Running XFCE 4.12 on Ubuntu 16.04 in vncserver. The PATH variable in any 
terminal is very short:

/usr/local/sbin:/usr/local/bin:/usr/sbin:/usr/bin:/sbin:/bin

I've tried overriding it everywhere:
- the various *profile files in /etc, home and so on
- /etc/environment
- various *xinit* files in home and /etc

Nothing seems to work. XFCE seems super-strict in overriding that 
variable. I can get it to work just fine in a text-mode ssh session to 
that system, but in a terminal running within XFCE the PATH variable is 
overriden every time.

I'm mystified as to why this is, and how can I fix it.

-- 
Florin Andrei
http://florin.myip.org/